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COLLEGE  AND   RELIGION 


Talks  to  College  Students  by  a  College  Teacher 


WILLIAM  HARDY  ALEXANDER,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  Classics  at  the  University 
of  Alberta,  Canada 


BOSTON 
RICHARD  G.  BADGER 

THE   GORHAM   PRESS 


Copyright,  1920,  by  Richard  G.  Badger 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


The  Gorham  Press,   Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


PREFACE 

The  seven  addresses  herein  are  selected  from 
my  Sunday  morning  talks  to  students  during  the 
past  three  years.  They  have  been  chosen  mainly 
because  I  have  been  able  to  ascertain  through 
chance  expressions  of  opinion  among  the  young 
men  and  women  themselves  that  these  are  all 
talks  which  have  awakened  a  response  in  the 
hearers.  I  am  bold  enough  to  hope  that  this 
judgment  may  be  endorsed  in  a  wider  field. 

Edmonton,  Alberta,  Canada. 
June,  1920. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


1  "And  to  Virtue  Knowledge"      ....  9 

2  Proving  and  Holding  Fast 20 

3  The  Alchemy  of  Struggle 32 

4  A  Great  University 46 

5  Faint  yet  Pursuing 59 

^6  Making  the  Grade        78 

7  Commencement 93 


COLLEGE  AND  RELIGION 


COLLEGE  AND  RELIGION 


"AND  TO  VIRTUE  KNOWLEDGE'* 

"And  besides  thisj  giving  all  diligence,  add  to  your  faith 
virtue,  and  to  virtue  knowledge.'* 

2d  Epistle  General  of  Peter,  1,5. 

I  HAVE  heard  it  said  that  teaching  is  a  monot- 
onous profession;  perhaps  I  have  even  thought 
so  sometimes.  It  does  involve  a  good  deal  of  rou- 
tine ;  t's  must  be  crossed  and  i's  dotted,  amo  is  con- 
jugated this  year  just  as  it  was  last  year,  (x  +  y)  ^ 
continues  to  furnish  the  same  old  result.  The 
same  old  experiments  must  be  set  up  to  prove  the 
same  old  laws  of  nature,  the  same  old  volumes 
translated,  the  same  old  difficulties  explained, 
and,  as  student  tradition  runs,  the  same  old  lec- 
tures delivered.  But  all  this  overlooks  the  com- 
ing into  our  college  life  year  by  year  of  a  new 
generation  of  young  scholars  with  all  the  won- 
der of  varying  personality  they  bring  with  them 
and  all  the  possibilities  they  suggest.    It  was  old 


10  College  and  Religion 

Friedrlch  Froebel,  I  think,  who  used  to  doff  his 
hat  to  the  children  he  met  in  the  streets  because 
he  saw  in  them  the  leaders  of  to-morrow;  he  had 
the  courage  to  carry  into  action  what  the  real 
teacher  feels  at  heart.  Then,  too,  from  each 
new  class  the  wise  teacher  drains  a  draught  of 
the  wine  of  youth  which  it  has  so  abundantly  to 
spare,  and  renews  with  it  his  hope  and  faith  and 
courage  for  the  task  of  life.  His  is  the  great 
and  the  unusual  opportunity,  too  often  under- 
valued, to  combine  within  himself  a  growing  vol- 
ume of  experience  and  the  gaiety  of  youth,  which 
at  the  best  is  an  ideal  existence,  and  at  the  worst 
affords  a  means  of  growing  old  gracefully. 

But  it  is  not  the  teacher  who  has  all  the  privi- 
leges; what  of  you  before  whom  to-day  swings 
open  the  portal  of  college  life?  Why,  it  is  no 
exaggeration,  even  if  it  is  sadly  trite,  to  say  that 
the  world  is  yours  at  that  age.  Fortune  coquettes 
with  you  at  eighteen,  twenty,  twenty-two,  while 
she  seeks  to  know  what  is  in  you ;  by  the  time  you 
are  forty,  she  proves  more  a  step-mother  than  a 
mistress,  and  puts  you  definitely  in  your  place 
and  bids  you  stay  there.  That  is  the  reason  why 
with  each  returning  college  year  there  comes  a 


^'And  to  Virtue  Knowledge''  1 1 

yearning  desire  In  my  mind  to  say  a  word  in  sea- 
son, not  of  a  sort  to  save  you  from  every  mis- 
take, because  there  are  no  such  golden  words  as 
that  for  the  game  of  life,  but  such  as  might  set 
you  thinking  about  one  or  two  fundamentals  in 
that  game.  It  will  be  kindlier  advice  than  sopho- 
mores give  freshmen,  though  probably  no  better 
meant. 

Writing  many  hundred  years  ago  an  ancient 
father  of  the  Christian  faith,  Simon  Peter,  was 
moved  to  lay  down  for  the  youthful  society  a  sort 
of  curriculum,  very  remarkable  for  its  range  and^ 
yet  equally  for  its  conciseness.  *'And  besides  this, 
giving  all  diligence,  add  to  your  faith  virtue,  and 
to  virtue  knowledge."  This  is  the  substance  of 
one  course  or  period  of  training  in  the  school  of 
character.  The  first  post-graduate  course  fol* 
low^s;  *'and  to  knowledge  temperance,  and  to  tem- 
perance patience,  and  to  patience  godliness."  A 
fairly  ambitious  programme!  But  there  is  yet 
another  post-graduate  course  to  which  you  are  ^ 
admitted  after  qualifying  in  the  former  two;  "and 
to  godliness,  brotherly  kindness,  and  to  brotherly 
kindness,  love."  Fortunately  for  us  we  do  not 
now  have  to  take  into  account  these  post-grad- 


12  College  and  Religion 

uate  studies;  you  are  just  becoming  undergrad- 
uates, and  graduation,  even  from  the  first  course, 
is  blissfully  far  removed  in  a  haze  of  golden  days. 
So  we  open  Simon  Peter's  calendar  at  the  under- 
graduate course  once  more  and  read  again  in  this 
catalogue  which  for  brevity  is  unrivalled  among 
college  catalogues :  "And  besides  this,  giving  all 
diligence,  add  to  your  faith  virtue,  and  to  virtue 
knowledge." 

Is  this  as  simple  as  it  looks?  "Giving  all  dili- 
gence;" is  it  easy  to  give  diligence?  Is  it  easy 
to  go  farther  yet  and  to  give  all  diligence  in  the 
prosecution  of  a  study  or  the  cultivation  of  a 
character?  You  and  I  know  that  it  is  not,  and 
yet  here  it  is  made  a  prime  condition,  a  pre- 
requisite of  getting  along  at  all.  And  now  you 
are  anticipating  the  worst;  well,  it  must  none  the 
less  be  said  that  you  will  not  gain  much  knowl- 
edge to  add  to  virtue  without  diligence.  Genius 
has  been  defined  times  without  number  as  a  ca- 
pacity for  hard  work,  and  there  is  nothing  for 
which  I  have  a  more  profound  respect,  nothing 
from  which  I  anticipate  sounder  and  more  endur- 
ing results,  than  the  patient  industry  that  gives  ^ 
"all  diligence."     Here  is  the  point.     When  you 


'^And  to  Virtue  Knowledge^*  ly 

are  studying,  give  "all  diligence."  Don't  be  half 
on  the  football  field  and  half  at  your  text  book; 
don't  mix  your  dress  for  the  sophomore  hop  with 
fragments  of  Quintus  Horatius  Flaccus.  When 
you  are  doing  calculus,  concentrate  and  do  cal- 
culus; build  those  castles  in  Spain  some  time  to  be 
sure,  because  building  castles  is  a  knightly  occu- 
pation and  Spain  is  a  fair  country,  but  don't  build 
in  calculus  time.  When  you  tell  your  instructor 
that  you  spent  three  hours  in  preparation,  be 
sure  in  your  own  conscience  you  are  not  giving 
him  one  hour  of  preparation  and  two  of  war  sub- 
stitutes. 

But  did  you  ever  realize  that  the  making^  of 
character,  the  "adding  to  your  faith  virtue,"  is, 
just  as  much  as  your  studies,  a  matter  of  dili- 
gence? Just  consider  a  moment  the  wondrous 
chemistry  of  character;  in  that  laboratory  there 
are  a  hundred  experiments  going  forward,  many 
of  them  fraught  with  absolutely  determinative 
results  for  your  happiness  and  welfare,  but  you 
will  have  to  give  all  diligence  in  the  watching  of 
them.  It  is  a  tedious  business  to  be  sure  and 
entails  hanging  around  the  laboratory  a  good 
deal,  but  then  there  is  no  other  way;  God  has 


14  College  and  Religion 

appointed  this,  and  you  and  I  must  walk  in  it.  If 
you  want  a  character  that  is  worth  while  to  your- 
self and  to  other  people  you  must  "keep  your 
heart  with  diligence,  for  out  of  it  are  the  issues 
of  life."  Keeping  your  heart  means  among  other 
things  setting  a  guard  upon  the  tongue,  it  means 
the  calling  in  of  idle  thoughts  and  of  thoughts 
that  have  gone  wandering  in  forbidden  ways,  it 
means  discerning  sound  and  true  motives  and 
translating  them  into  actions  sound  and  true.  A 
great  sage  was  once  asked  what  was  the  happy 
life  and  replied:  "The  life  that  brings  the  few- 
est regrets."  There  will  be  many  years  for  you 
to  live  when  youth  is  passed;  in  those  years  it 
will  be  great  gain  that  your  life  in  retrospect 
should  bring  you  the  minimum  of  regrets.  All 
this  may  sound  dull,  but  it  is  not  necessarily  so 
tedious  as  it  seems.  You  girls  know  how  it  *was 
with  the  knitting  when  you  began  it,  how  pain- 
fully you  watched  and  counted,  and  then  by  and 
by  it  became  an  instinct  and  you  plained-and- 
purled  with  an  unconscious  ease.  It  is  not  quite 
so  simple  in  adding  character  to  your  faith,  but 
in  a  general  way  it  is  the  same ;  such  is  the  nature 
of  the  will  that  a  good  resolution  adhered  to  a 


''And  to  Virtue  Knowledge'^  if[ 

few  times  in  succession  forms  the  nucleus  of  a 
good  habit,  which  in  turn  almost  automatically 
engenders  good  deeds.  "Keep  your  heart  with 
all  diligence";  trifle  with  your  studies  a  bit  if  you 
will,  but  beware  of  trifling  with  your  self-respect, 
your  sense  of  honor,  your  finer  nature,  your  per- 
sonal cleanness.  These  are  all  sensitive  material 
and  can  be  so  irreparably  damaged,  and  so  life  is 
soured  and  spoiled  sometimes  in  its  beginning  and 
all  its  gold  early  turned  to  tinsel. 

But  you  remember  that  Simon  Peter  spoke  of 
this  character,  this  ^'virtue,"  as  an  addition  to 
your  faith.  Of  faith  let  us  take  to-day  the  widest 
possible  view;  faith  is  a  deep-seated  belief  in  the 
reality  of  life  and  its  purposes.  That  sort  of 
faith  seems  to  ^e  fundamental;  it  is  the  sort  of 
thing  you  have  to  have  at  the  very  base  of  your 
life  if  you  are  to  go  on  living  at  all.  Why  get 
knowledge,  why  get  character,  why  get  temper- 
ance, why  cultivate  a  dozen  other  good  and  en- 
gaging qualities  if  you  are  but  a  squirrel  in  a 
cage,  working  his  poor  treadmill  furiously  and  in 
the  end  accomplishing  nothing?  I  hope  you  have 
this  faith  in  the  real  worth  of  life,  in  the  reality 
of  the  Eternal  behind  life,  and  in  the  reality  of 


1 6  College  and  Religion 

the  task  which  in  collaboration  with  God  you 
must  perform.  Such  a  faith  has  nothing  to  fear 
from  a  university  course;  it  is  capable  of  making 
the  adjustments  that  a  widening  knowledge  will 
certainly  suggest. 

"And  to  virtue,  knowledge."  First  faith  in 
life  and  the  reality  of  its  purposes,  then  char- 
acter built  upon  that  faith,  then  knowledge  the 
better  to  enable  you  to  act  your  part  whatever 
that  may  be.  There  opens  up  before  you  the  glori- 
ous opportunity  to  complete  the  necessities  of 
faith  and  character  with  the  grace  and  the  beauty 
of  knowledge.  There  is  the  whole  field  of  litera- 
ture ancient  and  modern,  sacred  and  profane, 
in  which  is  gathered  all  the  thought  of  all  the 

mm 

ages  to  which  you  are  now  in  the  fullness  of  time 
become  the  heir,  and  not  only  is  thought  there 
but  you  will  find  it  decked  out  with  all  the  choice 
flowers  of  the  garden  of  language.  There  is 
the  marvellous  book  of  science,  that  grand  and 
stately  volume  the  leaves  of  which  are  the  starry 
heavens,  the  ocean-floors,  and  the  eternal  hills; 
you  are  to  have  a  chance  to  peer  at  all  the  mys- 
tery within.  There  is  the  scroll  of  history  preg- 
nant with  meaning  for  the  present  and  for  the 


'^And  to  Virtue  Knowledge'*  17 

future  to  those  who  can  Interpret  it  and  read 
understandingly  therein,  the  store-house  of  the 
political  and  economic  wisdom  of  a  hundred  gen- 
erations and  more  of  men.  Surely  no  slackness, 
no  arms  that  hang  down  or  knees  that  are  feeble, 
will  keep  you  from  getting  what  in  these  fields  is 
justly  yours. 

For  the  fact  remains  that  these  things  must  be 
added,  and  that  the  addition  means  work.  Some- 
how or  other  it  does  not  seem  to  be  the  order  of 
the  universe  that  you  can  get  anything  that  is 
worth  while  for  nothing.  The  fine  fruit  of  litera- 
ture, the  revelations  of  science,  the  lessons  of  his- 
tory, do  not  enter  into  the  fabric  of  your  being 
unsolicited  and  unwrought  for;  they  are  all  pearls 
of  great  price,  and  the  price  must  be  paid  or  there 
is  no  transaction.  Don't  think  that  you  can  add 
knowledge  to  yourself  simply  by  attendance  at 
college;  knowledge  is  not  an  infection  which  you 
can  incur  at  a  seat  of  learning.  No,  you  will  not 
get  much  in  the  way  of  knowledge  merely  by  at- 
tending lectures  and  seeing  demonstrations  and 
hearing  interesting  talks;  you  will  have  to  offer 
more  substantial  coin  than  that.  I  hope  you  have 
come  prepared  with  the  price. 


1 8  College  and  Religion 

We  may  not  to-day  discuss  those  stages  of  edu- 
cation which  the  apostle  represents  as  lying  be- 
yond the  first  course,  but  there  are  such  stages, 
and  an  advance  through  these  is  what  constitutes 
the  full  sum  of  education.  Temperance,  patience, 
godhness,  brotherly  kindness,  love, — that  is  quite 
a  formidable  list.  But  are  there  any  qualities  in 
that  list  with  which  one  who  is  seeking  the  per- 
fection of  manhood  or  womanhood  would  care 
to  dispense?  And  if  there  are  not,  is  it  not  de- 
sirable that  we  should  know  the  way  by  which  we 
may  go  on  to  attain  all  of  them  in  some  measure, 
even  if  we  know  that  we  cannot  adequately  attain 
in  all?  Now  you  know  how  it  is  at  college;  you 
must  pass  through  certain  lower  courses  to  reach 
the  more  advanced  courses,  and  you  must  obtain 
certain  lower  degrees  as  the  passport  to  higher 
degrees.  Are  you  aware  of  any  principle  in  the 
great  university  of  life  which  should  cause  things 
to  be  different  there?  No,  it  is  line  upon  line, 
precept  upon  precept,  here  a  little  and  there  a 
little,  the  winning  of  this  or  that  as  a  vantage 
ground  from  which  to  push  on  to  something  else. 

There  is  nothing  in  my  reminder  that  knowl- 
edge is  an  essential  step  tFat  is  inconsistent  with 


*^And  to  Virtue  Knowledge*'  19 

the  best  of  good  times;  it  is  your  privilege  with 
all  this  to  reap  a  full  harvest  of  the  joy  of  youth.- 
Still,  youth  is  a  season  of  preparation,  too,  and 
if  you  are  ever  to  perform  this  great  sum  in  the 
addition  of  qualities,  you  must  be  setting  about  it 
even  now.  God  speed  you  as  you  begin  and  bring 
you  in  good  time  to  the  complete  result. 


PROVING  AND  HOLDING  FAST 

"Prove  all  things;  hold  fast  that  which  is  good.*' 

I  Thessalonians,  5,  2i. 

This  fifth  chapter  of  First  Thessalonians  is 
remarkable  for  the  number  of  abrupt,  pithy  say- 
ings it  holds  in  small  compass.  That  is  not  St. 
Paul's  ordinary  style ;  he  runs  rather  to  long  sen- 
tences, and  sometimes  gets  himself  so  involved 
that  he  never  succeeds  in  getting  out  of  the  tangle 
again  even  with  the  vigorous  aid  of  all  the  com- 
mentators. But  another  mood  was  on  him  this 
day,  and  he  writes  very  simply  and  directly,  as  if 
remembering  how  much  like  inexperienced  chil- 
dren in  a  naughty  neighborhood  these  Christians 
of  Thessalonica  were,  and  how  much  therefore 
like  children  they  would  stand  in  need,  not  of 
long,  doctrinal  sermons,  but  of  practical  precepts 
on  which  to  lean  in  hour  of  trial.  And  so  they 
come,  these  maxims,  in  a  veritable  string  of 
pearls,  each  beautiful  in  itself  but  yet  more  beau- 
tiful in  the  necklace  wherein  it  is  set. 

20 


Proving  and  Holding  Fast  2i 

*'Follow  that  which  is  good."  Follow  it,  you 
observe ;  don't  be  worried  for  fear  that  you  may 
possibly  get  ahead  of  it.  The  good  is  an  ideal; 
you  and  I  have  never  caught  up  to  it  and  never 
will  altogether,  so  great  is  the  handicap  the  good 
has  over  us.  Never  mind;  the  point  is  not  to  sit 
down  supinely  but  to  be  up  and  doing,  to  follow, 
— and  that  impHes  motion,  activity, — in  a  good 
lead. 

"Be  at  peace  among  yourselves."  Paul,  you 
remember,  was  a  travelling  bishop,  episcopos, 
overseer,  with  quite  a  big  diocese  to  cover  and  a 
good  many  churches  to  visit  on  his  round.  I  im- 
agine it  is  a  trying  experience;  how  weary  he 
must  have  got  of  it  all  and  them  all  sometimes 
with  their  eternal  bickerings  in  which  he  had  to 
act  as  umpire,  adjuster,  peace-maker  and  diplo- 
matist until  he  must  have  wondered  what  use 
there  was  in  trying  to  preach  the  "peace  of  God 
that  passeth  all  understanding"  to  pagans  when 
his  Christian  converts  squabbled  so  pettily  and 
wrangled  over  such  futile  points  of  difference.  It 
would  be  a  better  world  for  nations  and  for  in- 
dividuals if  we  could  only  make  up  our  minds  to 
"be  at  peace  among  ourselves." 


22  College  and  Religion 

"Rejoice   evermore  I"     What   a   good   word! 

Don't  frown,  growl,  or  grguch;  smile,  laugh,  be 

happy,    "rejoice    evermore."     And   "evermore," 

notice, — not  just  simply  when  you're  feeling  good 

and  well-disposed  and  kindly,  but  at  those  other 

times  too  when  your  nerves  are  on  the  rack  and 

you  are  sorely  put  to  it  for  the  next  move,  trying 

to  keep  your  head 

"when  those  about  you 
Are  losing  theirs  and  blaming  it  on  you." 

The  happiness  that  you  do  not  have  to  use  on 
prosperous  days  lay  aside  as  your  balance  for  the 
days  that  are  dull  and  full  of  sorrow  and  pain. 
Is  it  true  what  Father  Faber  wrote : 

"Mostly  men's  many-featured  faces  wear 
Looks  of  indifference  or  of  blank  despair"? 

One  does  not  like  to  think  so,  but  does  our  coun- 
tenance bring  sunshine  where  it  goes? 

"Pray  without  ceasing."  But  how  shall  we  of 
the  modern  world,  crowded  with  pressing  duties, 
innumerable  engagements,  insistent  worries,  and 
thronging  cares, — how  shall  we  "pray  without 
ceasing"?  Most  of  us  solve  it,  I  fancy,  by  ceas- 
ing without  praying,  from  which  state  only  five 


Proving  and  Holding  Fast  23 

minutes  or  so  on  a  Sunday  morning  delivers  us. 
But  perhaps  it  all  hangs  on  what  you  call  prayer. 
You  remember  the  psalmist's  description  of  the 
stars,  "there  is  no  speech  nor  language,  their 
voice  is  not  heard."  That  is  the  way  with  un- 
ceasing prayer;  it  has  no  speech  nor  language  nec- 
essarily, perhaps  its  voice  is  not  heard,  but  just 
forms  one  of  the  diapason  undertones  of  the  har- 
mony of  the  world.  "Work  is  prayer"  says  the 
punning  Latin,  and  it  Is  true  that  we  can  so  hallow 
and  ennoble  our  work  that  it  Is  all  a  prayer,  and 
that  men  see  upon  our  faces  reflected  a  glory  that 
comes  from  contact  with  the  infinite.  "Pray 
without  ceasing."  Prayer  is  like  everything  else 
in  human  experience;  the  reward  is  for  perseve- 
rance, there  are  no  honors  to  the  slacker. 

But  of  all  these  maxims  the  acme  is  reached 
in  that  which  rings  down  the  long  hall  of  the 
ages  with  encouragement  to  scholar  and  thinker;' 
"prove  all  things,  hold  fast  that  which  is  good." 
The  two  parts  of  this  must  not  be  separated. 
"Prove  all  things," — there  you  have  the  appeal 
intellectual  which  should  be  graven  in  letters  of 
gold  on  tablets  of  silver  at  the  gate  of  every 
school  and  college,  and  made  axiomatic  to  their 


24  College  and  Religion 

being.  Get  knowledge  and  understanding,  and 
use  them  to  try,  test,  and  prove  the  propositions 
moral,  intellectual,  spiritual,  political,  social, 
which  force  themselves  on  your  consideration  in 
these  times.  Don't  jump  at  conclusions;  proved' 
all  things,  think  them  out  to  a  finish,  force  them 
to  undergo  the  acid  test  of  thought.  And,  mark 
you,  "all  things";  there  is  none  exempted  before 
this  tribunal,  no,  not  one.  Into  the  crucible  of 
thought  must  go  all  our  problems,  and" that  means 
our  religious  problems  as  well  as  the  others. 
"Prove  all  things" ;  as  Plato  puts  it  with  the  fine 
courage  of  the  Greek  intellect,  "let  us  follow  the 
argument  whithersoever  it  leads,"  regardless  of 
the  fact  that  it  may  cross  abruptly  at  right  angles 
the  lines  of  traditional  belief  and  social  conven- 
tion, resolved  that  for  us  at  least  there  must  be  a 
resolute  facing  of  the  issues  and  not  merely  a 
turning  away  of  the  eyes  to  vanity  from  pain. 

But  that  is  not  all.  St.  Paul  adds,  "hold  fast 
that  which  is  good."  This  is  really  what  I  want 
to  engage  your  attention  in,  the  pleasure  and  in- 
deed the  privilege  of  entertaining  some  definite 
convictions.  There  is  a  class  of  people  who  suffi- 
ciently   comply    with    the    duty    of  proving    all 


Proving  and  Holding  Fast  2$ 

things;  they  read,  they  study,  they  meditate,  they 
go  through  all  the  intellectual  motions  prepara- 
tory to  reaching  a  conviction,  but  never,  so  far 
as  any  one  can  discover,  have  they  actually  enter- 
tained a  definite  conviction  on  any  thing.  When 
you  endeavor  to  ascertain  their  views  they  be- 
come as  elusive  as  an  eel  and  about  as  valuable 
intellectually.  And  the  remarkable  thing  is  that 
many  of  them  pride  themselves  upon  it  and  speak 
of  their  mental  attitude  as  impartial,  detached, 
unbiassed,  and  what  not.  Nay,  I  record  with 
peculiar  shame  that  the  consensus  of  civilized 
mankind  has  given  to  s,uch  a  state  of  mind  the 
epithet  "academic,"  which  indicates  how  com- 
monly in  human  experience  professors  get  so  in- 
terested in  merely  testing  all  things  that  they 
never  attain  to  certainty  in  anything. 

Now  the  intellectual  test  and  the  intellectual 
conclusion  are  of  no  avail  unless  translated  into 
action.  The  mystic  who  stays  forever  up  on  the 
Mount  of  Transfiguration  plays  no  part  in  the 
uplift  of  the  world;  it  is  the  man  who  comes 
down  among  the  crowd  again  with  shining  face 
that  really  counts.  The  real  leader  of  mankind 
is  some  Moses  who  scales  the  Sinai  peak  and 


/^^ 


26  College  and  Religion 

brings  back  the  law  to  the  men  of  the  plain.  So 
then  to  intellectual  judgment  must  be  added  moral 
resolution,  to  stand  fast  in  the  plain  by  what  you 
feel  you  have  on  the  mountain  discovered  to  be 
true.  A  fine  phrase  that  "hold  fast" !  To  stand, 
to  hold  fast,  to  have  some  definite  ideal  of  good 
in  religion,  government,  education,  and  society, 
some  exact  purpose  in  life,  some  ordered  view  of 
man  and  existence,  and  to  have  the  courage,  the 
uncommon  courage,  to  stand  by  your  views,  to 
have  some  definite  convictions, — there  is  the 
measure  of  a  man  or  a  woman.    "-^ 

This  does  not  mean  just  being  obstinate;  con- 
stantly in  warfare  the  tactician  will  change  his 
mind  about  the  real  value  of  a  position  and  will 
relinquish  it  because  he  no  longer  thinks  it  worth 
while  to  hold  it.  So  it  is  with  every  one  of  us; 
entertaining  some  definite  convictions  need  prove 
no  obstacle  to  change  as  we  keep  constantly  prov- 
ing them  from  time  to  time.  If  a  man  tells  me 
that  his  views  have  not  changed  in  ten  years,  I 
suspect  him  to  be  the  victim  of  a  strange  disorder, 
the  sleeping  sickness.  There  is  a  dash  of  senti- 
ment, no  doubt,  in  saying  that  my  father's  politi- 
cal convictions  are  good  enough  for  me,  but  it 


Proving  and  Holding  Fast  27 

does  not  argue  much  exercise  of  the  thinking 
power.  The  conservatism  of  the  mule  is  not 
usually  the  subject  of  a  eulogium. 

But  what,  you  say,  are  these  few  definite  con- 
victions which  you  esteem  it  a  pleasure  and  in- 
deed a  privilege  to  entertain?  I  hope  you  do  not 
suppose  I  am  going  to  inflict  my  particular  set 
upon  you  or  to  suggest  that  there  is  any  standard 
ready  made  to  which  you  can  make  yours  con- 
form. It  would  be  a  dull  world  if  we  were  all  in 
agreement;  it  is  out  of  the  variety  of  convictions 
that  progress  arises.  And  if  I  have  said  "some" 
or  "a  few"  it  is  only  to  suggest  that  there  is  an 
irreducible  minimum  of  conviction  which  is  essen-  ^ 
tial  to  distinguish  a  man  or  a  woman  from  a 
jelly-fish. 

Oh  these  jelly-fishes  in  human  life  I  They  float 
everywhere  upon  its  sea.  They  have  no  convic-ii--- 
tions  about  the  social  order  in  which  they  live, 
whether  it  is  right  or  wrong,  or  partly  right  and 
partly  wrong,  and  why;  they  are  jelly-fishes  float- 
ing in  the  tide  of  social  conventions.  They  con- 
tract,— ^you  know  how  sensitive  jelly-fishes  are  I 
— at  the  bare  mention  of  politics  and  at  the  idea 
of  any  one  having  strong  and  positive  opinions 


2  8  College  and  Religion 

upon  the  parties  and  their  policies,  especially  a 
woman,  assuming  apparently  that  government  is 
a  kind  of  Providence  surrounding  their  lives,  until 
some  awful  cataclysm  comes  in  history  and  the 
government  demands  some  return  in  service,  yes, 
even  from  jelly-fishes.  They  have  no  views  upon 
morals,  private  or  public,  except  so  far  as  these 
relate  to  the  possibility  of  scandal;  as  to  the  ori- 
gin, significance,  and  probable  evolution  of  the 
moral  ideal,  as  to  its  relation  to  religion,  as  to 
the  possibility  of  its  existence  apart  from  religion, 
they  have  no  convictions.  And  in  religion  the 
jelly-fishes  run  true  to  type;  they  are  always 
found  in  very  safe  and  very  shallow  waters,  never 
venturing  out  into  the  depths  of  the  stirring  tide, 
especially  when  it  draws  once  again  into  the  vasty 
deep. 

But  why  the  pleasure  and  the  privilege?  First 
then,  the  privilege.  A  privilege,  as  its  derivation 
indicates,  was  a  special  legal  enactment  under  the 
Roman  law  in  favor  of  some  specific  individual, 
or  some  special  right  acquired  by  an  individual 
and  recognized  as  valid  by  the  law.  It  was  some- 
thing which  distinguished  him  from  the  general- 
ity and  set  him  apart.    If  you  have  a  few  definite 


Proving  and  Holding  Fast  29 

convictions  upon  life  at  which  you  have  arrived  L^ 
after  proving  them  this  way  and  that,  you  have  a 
privilege,  never  doubt  it.    God  has  legislated  spe- 
cially in  your  case  and  conferred  on  you  a  privi- 
lege.    But  remember'^that  privilege  like  nobility, 
If  it  carries  rights,  implies  responsibilities  as  well;  '^ 
not  for  no  purpose  have  you  been  emancipated 
from  the  servitude  of  the  jelly-fishes.    This  privi- 
lege of  having  some  definite  convictions  is  a  cry-z- 
ing need  of  our  modern  world;  there  seems  to  be 
abroad  a  general  tendency  to  blur  in  every  de-  •- 
partment  of  human  thought,  to  talk  increasingly 
about  ''suspension  of  judgment"  which  is  often 
just  a  ponderous  term  for  laziness,  to  get  into 
that  condition,  that  painfully  "academic"  condi- 
tion, which  was  never  better  described  than  as 
"always  learning  and  never  coming  to  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  truth." 

The  pleasure  you  may  think  rather  doubtfully 
of;  the  person  of  even  a  few  definite  convictions 
is  likely  to  encounter  trouble  among  the  jelly-fish, 
some  of  whom  nature  has  endowed  with  stings. 
Yet  there  is  pleasure  after  all,  the  pleasure  of 
standing  square  with  the  truth  as  you  saw  it  and 
the  pleasure  of  having  exercised  strength  rather 


30  College  and  Religion 

than  just  having  yielded  to  lassitude,  weakness, 
and  convention.  It  is  not  pleasure  as  the  world 
commonly  defines  it;  "peace  I  leave  with  you,  my 
peace  I  give  unto  you;  not  as  the  world  giveth, 
give  I  unto  you"  but  a  peace  which  the  world  can 
neither  give  nor  take  away.  It  is  the  summa 
voluptas,  the  highest  pleasure  of  philosophy,  the 
satisfaction  in  the  exercise  of  the  supremest 
powers  of  being.  The  world's  lash  will  hurt  and 
its  sting  will  wound  unless  you  are  constituted 
with  a  peculiar  skin  of  indifference  round  about 
you,  but  you  will  be  compensated  by  the  pleasure 
you  will  find  in  your  own  society,  and  after  all,  as 
Stevenson  put  it,  to  keep  friends  with  one's  self, 
to  preserve  self-respect,  is  no  mean  task. 

I  shall  not  pursue  this  thought  farther;  it  is  for 
you  to  make  the  personal  decision  for  or  against 
being  a  jelly-fish,  though  I  should  be  sorry  to 
think  that  any  of  you  would  thus  deliberately 
climb  down  the  ladder  of  life  to  a  lower  order  of 
being.  I  hope  some  of  you  will  think  it  worth 
while  to  try  in  your  college  years  to  get  some  con- 
victions, to  escape  the  reproach  of  Laodiceanism.. 
"I  know  thy  works  that  thou  art  neither  cold  nor 
hot  ...  so  then  because  thou  art  lukewarm  and 


Proving  and  Holding  Fast  31 

neither  cold  nor  hot,  I  will  spue  thee  out  of  my 
mouth."  In  the  plan  and  purpose  of  God  there 
is  neither  room  nor  place  for  the  inveterate  com- 
promiser in  the  road  of  progress ;  men  and  women 
and  churches  and  universities  and  societies  and 
nations  must  prove  all  things  in  their  constitu- 
tions, must  attain  some  measure  of  conviction, 
must  hold  fast.  And  saith  the  Lord:  "To  him  c^ 
that  overcometh," — the  warrior,  you  observe,  not 
the  jelly-fish — "will  I  give  to  eat  of  the  tree  of 
life  which  is  in  the  midst  of  the  paradise  of  God." 


THE  ALCHEMY  OF  STRUGGLE  * 

Ah,  you  say,  that  is  an  odd-looking  word,  that 
"alchemy,"  not  one  of  the  friendly  counters  of 
everyday  speech!  It  is  a  rare  word  now,  but 
time  was  when  the  fond  hopes  of  Europe  centred 
upon  it,  for  was  not  alchemy  the  magic  that  was 
to  transmute  all  metals  into  gold?  Getting  rich 
quickly  is  no  new  dream;  every  age  has  its  own 
form  of  the  delusion,  and  of  all  these  forms 
none  is  quainter,  none  more  fascinating,  than  the 
search  of  the  alchemists  for  the  philosopher's 
stone,  the  medium  by  which  all  baser  elements 
were  to  be  converted  into  the  noblest  element  of 
them  all.  Alchemy  of  the  Middle  Ages  has  settled 
down  into  the  no  less  fascinating  and  far  more 
scientific  pursuit  of  Chemistry,  but  for  all  that 
we  turn  back  a  little  wistfully  at  times  to  the  days 
when  magic  hovered  around  the  crucible  and  the 
test-tube,  and  when  the  man  of  science  himself 

*  The  writer  acknowledges  gratefully  that  the  whole  idea 
of  thus  interpreting  Jacob's  struggle  comes  to  him  from  a 
sermon  of  the  Rev.  William  Channing  Gannett,  entitled 
"Wrestling   and  Blessing." 

32 


The  Alchemy  of  Struggle  33 

believed  in  the  occult  properties  of  the  elements 
he  worked  with. 

I  could  have  been  more  thoroughly  modern, 
more  strictly  up-to-date,  by  making  my  subject, 
*'The  Chemistry  of  Struggle,"  but  I  believe  it 
would  have  been  at  the  sacrifice  not  only  of  ro- 
mantic suggestion  but  even  of  actual  truth. 
Chemistry  implies  an  exact  science  wherein  from 
things  given  follow  inevitably  certain  things  found 
and  demonstrated;  the  magic  touch  has  passed 
away  like  "the  glory  from  the  earth."  But  I  am 
not  willing  to  admit  that  it  is  just  a  precise  science 
that  explains  the  phenomena  with  which  I  pro- 
pose to  deal;  there  is  in  them  a  touch  of  an- 
other something,  magic  if  you  will,  other  than 
mere  material  forces  and  above  them,  which 
makes  me  cling  to  the  less  usual  term  "alchemy." 
And  then  too  in  the  processes  I  shall  consider  the 
alchemist's  goal  is  in  part  at  least  reached,  and 
base  metal  is  transmuted  divinely  into  pure  gold 
of  character. 

The  story  of  Jacob's  wrestling  as  we  read  it  in 
the  chapter  of  Genesis  is  an  eerie  legend  of  that 
sort  which  men  of  learning  call  etiological;  it  is 
one  of  that  class  of  legends  which  purport  to  give 


34  College  and  Religion 

the  historical  explanation  of  some  name,  some 
custom,  some  religious  rite.  Among  the  children 
of  Israel  a  strange  practice  prevailed  of  "eating 
not  of  the  sinew  which  is  upon  the  hollow  of  the 
thigh,"  and  as  men  questioned  themselves  and 
others  upon  the  origin  of  things  in  a  more  sophis- 
ticated age,  the  story  of  Jacob  and  the  Mysterious 
Wrestler  emerged.  Such  legends  are  common  in 
the  lore  of  all  nations,  arising  from  the  natural 
and  insatiable  curiosity  of  man  about  himself  and 
his  environment. 

But  like  many  another  legend,  though  of  little 
worth  from  the  standpoint  of  history  or  science, 
it  is  full  of  the  deepest  spirit  of  poetry.  What  a 
series  of  pictures  you  have  there,  so  perfectly  em- 
balmed in  the  arnber  of  tradition!  The  lonely 
Jacob,  weary  and  depressed;  the  nameless  visitor*, 
all  unannounced,  who  comes  to  grips  with  him; 
the  close-locked  wrestle  througTi  the  long  night 
hours;  the  miraculous  touch;  the  desire  on  the 
stranger's  part  to  be  gone  before  daybreak,  as  all 
fairies  and  demons  and  ghostly  visitants  have 
ever  wished;  Jacob's  invincible  hold;  his  demand 
for  blessing  as  the  price  of  release ;  the  new  name 
of  Israel,  "prince  with  God" ;  the  mystery  of  the 


The  Alchemy  of  Struggle  35 

stranger's  name  preserved  throughout;  Jacob's 
shrewd  guess  and  commemorative  name,  Peni-el, 
*'God's  face";  and  then,  as  he  crosses  the  brook 
Jabbok,  sunrise,  the  golden  dawn,  daylight  once 
more.  I  do  not  know  that  any  literature  con- 
tains a  story  more  successful  in  combining  in  a 
short  compass  all  the  elements  of  fear,  wonder, 
surprise,  charm,  beauty, — all  that  goes  to  make  a 
great  poem  or  drama. 

But  the  really  great  poem  or  drama  never  re- 
mains content  with  mere  success  of  form  or  ar- 
rangement of  material;  it  uses  these  but  as  a 
shrine  for  the  Spirit  of  the  whole.  It  is  not  far 
to  seek  here.  All  night  long  in  those  silent  hours 
men  usually  give  to  repose,  Jacob  wrestled  body 
to  body  with  a  man  of  mystery  who  even  lamed 
him  before  the  struggle  ended,  but  Jacob  refused 
to  relinquish  his  hold  till  from  this  Presence  he 
had  gained  a  blessing.  Then  when  he  thought 
it  all  over,  he  got  a  new  view  of  what  had  been 
so  fearsome  in  those  night  hours  of  agony,  and 
concluded  that  he  had  seen  in  that  struggle  noth- 
ing other  than  "God's  face."  So,  limping,  he 
crossed  the  brook  to  join  his  company,  and  the 
sunshine  burst  full  upon  him  in  all  its  dawn-glory. 


36  College  and  Religion 

Night,  struggle,  sorrow,  anxiety,  all  these  gone; 
as  a  prince  he  had  wrestled  and  proved  his  power 
with  God,  and  as  he  wrestled,  he  had  seen  God's 
face.  Here  in  simplest,  loveliest  language  stands 
revealed  the  most  eternal  of  truths,  that  from 
wrestling  comes  blessing,  from  darkness  light, 
from  storm  calm,  and  coronation  from  the  long 
determined  fight. 

But  you  say  to  me :  **Ah,  that  is  only  a  story 
after  all,  and  it  happened  so  long  ago  and  so  far 
away!"  Wrong;  no  one  of  us  escapes  the  expe- 
rience of  Jacob,  though  it  seldom  strikes  us  as 
poetry  or  seems  to  be  jewelled  in  a  poetic  setting 
when  it  does  come,  at  least,  that  is  the  way  we 
feel.  Each  one  of  us  wrestles,  desperately  some- 
times, with  mysterious  forces  that  rob  us  of  the 
hours  of  sleep.  Some  go  down  to  defeat  in  that 
struggle  so  that  they  can  have  only  God's  mercy 
and  not  his  seal  and  sign  of  approval,  but  others 
endure  to  the  end,  steadfast  under  maiming  even 
of  the  heart  and  soul,  and  become  princes  with 
power,  gaining  a  blessing  so  great  that  we  find 
no  words  so  adequate  to  describe  it  as  the  old 
words ;  they  have  seen  God  face  to  face. 

He  comes  to  us  in  different  forms,  this  Mys- 


The  Alchemy  of  Struggle  37 

terlous  Stranger  who  l^ys  hold  of  us  so  suddenly 
as  he  emerges  from  the  unseen,  and  with  so 
powerful  a  grip.  One  of  his  very  commonest  dis- 
guises is  failure.  Often  to  the  student  above  all 
others  the  Sable  Wrestler  comes  thus.  The 
courses  at  college  prove  harder  than  one  had 
thought,  or  perhaps,  worse  yet,  we  feel  that  we 
have  not  the  powers  of  mind  we  imagined  we  had. 
The  first  test-results  are  best  veiled  by  charity, 
the  daily  quizzes  are  a  succession  of  trials,  the 
professors  appear  to  be  the  mind-readers  of  what 
you  know  not.  Those  are  hours  of  darkness  in- 
deed, and  out  of  them  the  wrestler  descends  upon 
your  soul  and  says:  "Better  give  up.  This  is 
the  wrong  path  for  you  to  go.  You  have  missed 
your  calling.  You  are  a  failure."  Dear  lad  or 
girl,  he  is  touching  the  sinew  in  the  hollow  of 
your  thigh  to  break  your  grip,  but  if  you  will 
"stay  with  him,''  as  our  phrase  is,  you  will  extort 
from  him  a  blessing,  even  your  heart's  desire,  and 
you  will  realize  that  you  have  been  at  Peni-el, 
and  seen  God's  face.  For  the  Sable  Wrestler  is 
none  other  than  God  and  in  the  grim  wrestle  of 
the  soul  he  sifts  out  the  hearts  of  men  and  learns 
who  best  may  serve  as  his  collaborators.     "You 


38  College  and  Religion 

will  not  hear  me  now,"  cried  the  young  Disraeli 
to  the  jeering  Commons,  ''but  the  time  will  come 
when  you  will  have  to  hear  me,"  and  ultimately 
he  spoke  in  that  same  chamber  as  Prime  Min- 
ister. Professors  who  have  not  appreciated  your 
freshman  efforts  may  form  an  entirely  different 
estimate  of  you  before  you  graduate. 

Or  he  may  come  to  you  in  the  form  of  a  re- 
curring temptation,  the  one  to  which  your  own 
heart  tells  you  you  are  peculiarly  susceptible,  "the 
sin  that  doth  so  easily  beset  you."  It  will  startle 
some  of  you  to  have  me  suggest  that  this  is  God's 
hand  too,  but  I  prefer  to  explain  it  thus  than  to 
be  forced  to  the  dualism  of  God  and  Devil. 
Well,  in  this  matter  of  the  recurring  temptation 
we  are  all  on  common  ground;  "there  is  none 
righteous,  no,  not  one."  Oh,  the  strength  of  the 
Wrestler  when  he  comes  on  this  wise!  He  lays« 
hold  of  the  very  roots  of  your  soul  with  a  giant 
strength,  especially  when,  like  Jacob,  you  are 
lonely,  harassed,  and  depressed,  wrestles  with 
you  through  the  black  hours  of  your  soul-night, 
and  withers  the  sinews  of  your  resolution.  Time 
and  again  he  has  come  off  so  nearly  victorious 
that  only  a  sudden  and  violent  effort  saved  you. 


The  Alchemy  of  Struggle  39 

but  at  last  you  gather  up  all  your  soul's  force  and 
say:  "I  must  get  the  better  of  this  thing  now 
and  here."  The  Temptation  realizes  your  mood, 
would  fain  be  gone,  but  you  grip  it  all  the  harder 
and  will  not  let  it  go  "except  it  bless  thee."  And 
presently  you  emerge  a  victor.  The  alchemy  of 
struggle  has  refined  your  character  in  its  retorts; 
base  metal  has  come  forth  pure  gold.  You  know 
that  that  temptation  will  have  no  power  against 
you  forever;  you  are  a  prince  with  God  and  have 
prevailed;  and  in  your  struggle  you  have  seen 
God's  face.  There  is  the  magic  of  our  alchemy; 
through  things  temporal  you  have  seen  things 
eternal,  and  they  have  exefcised  their  charm. 

Sometimes  the  Black  Wrestler  is  curiously 
negative,  as  when  he  attacks  you  in  the  form  of 
sheer  inertia,  physical,  mental,  or  spiritual  slack- 
ness. It  is  not  then  what  he  urges  you  to  that  is 
significant;  it  is  what  he  would  seek  to  withhold 
you  from.  All  about  you  is  work  ready  for  your 
hands,  your  brain,  your  heart,  but  somehow  noth- 
ing happens;  it  is  clearly  your  move  but  no  rock 
is  more  firmly  rooted.  The  times  are  calling,  oh, 
So  loud  and  clear.  Up,  soldier,  shoulder  the  rifle 
and  take  the  field  for  freedom!     Up,  reformer, 


40  College  and  Religion 

mount  the  rostrum  and  speak  a  word  for  ad- 
vance! Up,  teacher  and  preacher,  forget  out- 
worn traditions  and  beliefs  and  lift  up  the  torch 
of  the  larger  light,  proclaim  the  wider  gospel  I 
For  the  love  of  all  mankind,  don't  be  a  priest  or 
a  Levite  and  pass  by  on  the  other  side ;  don't  en- 
roll yourself  among  the  do-nothings  when  there 
is  such  a  call  for  recruits  in  the  army  that  is  fight- 
ing for  the  positive  purposes  of  God.  Grip  the 
Dark  Stranger  of  Inertia,  even  when  you  feel  him 
laming  you.  Grip  him,  man !  Grip  him,  woman  I 
Say:  "Yes,  I  will  go,  I  will  work,  I  will  fight, 
I  will  believe!"  Oh,  the  boundless  power  of  a 
positive  purpose ;  it  can  say  to  mountains  of  doubt 
and  discouragement  and  despair  "Be  ye  removed 
hence  and  sunk  in  the  depths  of  the  sea!"  No 
mere  negation  ever  got  anything  anywhere. 
Come  to  grips  then  with  inertia,  doubt,  hesita- 
tion, irresolution,  hold  fast  to  your  purposes,  and 
as  the  spirits  of  inertia  leave  you,  you  can  de- 
mand of  them  the  blessing.  And  in  doing  posi- 
tive service,  in  performing  this  duty  and  that 
rather  than  rebelling  against  it,  you  will  see  that 
great,  new  light  which  is  called  God's  face. 
Perhaps  he  comes  disguised  as  illness,  either 


The  Alchemy  of  Struggle  41 

some  sudden  physical  disaster  or  a  chronic  malady, 
and  by  touching  your  soul's  sinew  would  reduce 
you  to  miserable,  hopeless,  helpless,  complaining 
invalidism.  Assuredly  this  is  a  painful  wrestle 
by  the  brook  Jabbok;  there  is  none  more  so.  You 
cannot  run  and  play,  skate  or  dance,  like  the  other 
boys  and  girls  because  of  the  cruel  illness  that 
left  you  hurt  and  maimed  those  many  years  ago ; 
God  grant  you  grace,  child,  for  you  have  a  hard 
wrestle  to  go  through!  Or  you  cannot  see  the 
flower's  rare  blossom  break  into  bloom  or  catch 
the  fleeting  smile  on  a  baby's  face  because  the 
light  in  you  is  gone  out  by  reason  of  that  bullet 
at  Passchendaale ;  perhaps  from  the  struggle  God 
can  make  light  the  darkness!  Or  you  are  just  a 
little  sick  all  the  time  with  a  malady  that  cannot 
be  quite  dislodged,  and  this  is  a  perpetual  trial 
because  you  live  on  the  edge  of  the  pleasant  land 
where  the  healthy  people  are  rushing  about  so 
vigorously;  even  in  this  there  may  be  more  of 
hope,  more  of  prospect,  than  you  had  supposed.' 
For  think  now!  William,  Prince  of  Orange  and 
the  third  king  of  that  name  in  the  roll  of  British 
sovereigns,  a  statesman  of  wide  vision  and  a  gen- 
eral of  skill  and  courage,  was  racked  constantly 


42  College  and  Religion 

by  asthma,  both  at  home  and  In  the  field.  Paul, 
the  great  apostle,  had  a  thorn  in  the  flesh,  "the 
messenger  of  Satan  to  buffet  him"  as  he  calls  it, 
for  Paul  was  really  a  dualist  in  his  conception  of 
the  moral  government  of  the  world.  Parkman, 
whose  historical  works  have  illuminated  Cana- 
dian history,  was  half-blind  all  his  days  from  a 
blow  struck  during  his  residence  at  Harvard  Col- 
lege.    John  Milton's  light 

,  was  spent 
Ere  half  his  days  in  this  dark  world  and  wide. 
And  that  one  talent  which  is  death  to  hide 
Lodged  with  him  useless,' 

and  yet  from  that  darkness  emerged  Paradise 
Lost,  Or,  if  you  will  go  to  ancient  Sparta,  you 
will  find  there  one  Tyrtaeus,  a  poet,  who  though 
lame  fired  by  his  song^he  souls  of  warriors  for 
the  fray.  How  many  a  sick  room  you  can  think 
of  in  your  own  experience  where  the  patient  suf- 
ferer has  wrestled  with  pain,  not  one  night  only 
unto  the  breaking  of  the  day  but  many  a  night, 
and  refused  to  give  in,  to  go  without  the  bless- 
ing, and  has  suddenly  gained  at  last  the  vision 
splendid  to  illuminate  what  was  dark  and  unrea- 
sonable before,  so  that  callers,  as  they  go  out 


The  Alchemy  of  Struggle  43 

from  the  room,  whisper  reverently,  *'Peni-el, 
God's  face."  The  process  of  this  alchemy  is  te- 
dious to  a  degree,  but  its  distillate  is  a  rare  es- 
sence indeed,  the  attar  of  roses  of  life. 

But  sometimes  the  Sable  Wrestler  who  comes 
upon  us  out  of  the  night  is  the  darkest  shadow 
that  can  fall  across  a  human  soul,  death,  the 
death  of  one  we  loved  far  better  than  life  itself; 
"would  God  I  had  died  for  thee,  O  Absalom,  my 
son,  my  son!"  Then  indeed  the  sinew  of  the 
soul  is  withered,  and  the  wrestler  bids  fair  to 
elude  our  grip  and  leave  us  nothing  but  the  recol- 
lection of  an  hour  when  all  the  sky  went  black 
at  once.  Into  the  inner  secret  of  a  struggle  such 
as  that  it  is  not  given  us  to  penetrate  save  by 
experience,  nor  is  it  considerate  or  profitable  to 
attempt  a  psychological  dissection.  I  will  just 
say  that  in  these  long  years  of  war  I  have  seen 
fathers  and  mothers,  wives  and  sweethearts,  go 
through  the  agony  and  emerge  with  faces  reflect- 
ing triumph  over  that  last  enemy,  which  is  Death. 
God  only  knows  how  they  won  out,  but  I  think  in 
the  end  they  must  have  had  a  glimpse  of  His 
face. 

And  so  throughout  it  is  the  story  that  Greek 


44  College  and  Religion 

drama  proclaimed  and  that  Jesus  confirmed  when 
he  set  his  face  steadfastly  to  go  to  Jerusalem,  the 
story  of  characters  *'made  perfect  through  suffer- 
ing.'* 

0  Cross  that  liftest  up  my  head, 

1  dare  not  ask  to  fly  from  thee; 
I  lay  in  dust  life's  glory  dead, 

And  from  the  ground  there  blossoms  red 
Life  that  shall  endless  be. 

Suffering  is  the  solvent  which  in  the  chemistry  of 
character  precipitates  the  unworthy  elements  and 
leaves  the  soul  pure.  It  is  not  the  native  nugget 
which  has  the  fairest  shape  but  the  gold  refined 
under  intense  heat  in  the  furnace  and  beaten  into 
form  under  the  infinite  blows  of  the  goldsmith's 
hammer.  It  is  not  the  subject  that  came  easiest 
to  you  that  you  really  remember  best  or  that  goes 
most  deeply  into  the  tissues  of  your  life;  it  is  the 
one  at  which  you  wrestled  even  unto  tears.  It  is 
not  as  a  rule  the  child  of  ease  and  luxury  who 
serves  best  the  world  and  lives  in  the  grateful 
hearts  of  men  but  some  rail-splitter  of  Illinois, 
tried  as  by  fire  and  refined  by  suffering  till  he 
reaches  an  apotheosis  in  the  hearts  of  his  country- 
men and  of  the  world.    A  strange  alchemist  this 


The  Alchemy  of  Struggle  45 

life  of  ours,  working  quietly,  though  we  know  it 
not,  to  decompose  and  reconstitute  our  natures. 
You  may  laugh  at  the  idea  of  conversion,  but  it 
is  a  process  going  on  every  day  in  your  heart,  not 
suddenly  like  the  electric  flash  except  in  rare  in- 
stances, but  by  the  slow  and  steady  operation  of 
soul-change.  There  is  much  to  hearten  us  in  that 
reflection;  "no  afiliction  for  the  present  seemeth 
joyous  but  grievous,  but  in  the  end  it  worketh  the 
peaceable  fruits  of  righteousness."  Up  then  and 
on,  if  we  have  been  hesitating  to  take  hold  of  life 
steadily  and  whole  and  trying  rather  to  dodge  its 
difficulty  and  distress;  let  us  wait  on  this  side  of 
the  brook  Jabbok,  strong  of  heart,  fortified  in 
resolution,  for  the  Wrestler  who  will  join  us  pres- 
ently to  try  for  a  fall. 


A    GREAT    UNIVERSITY,    ITS    COURSE 
AND  ITS  DEGREE 

Pilate  therefore  said  unto  him:  Art  thou  a  king  then? 
Jesus  answered:  Thou  sayest  that  I  am  a  king.  To  this 
end  was  I  born  and  for  this  cause  came  I  into  the  world 
that  I  should  hear  witness  unto  the  truth.  Every  one  that 
is  of  the  truth  heareth  my  voice.  Pilate  saith  unto  him: 
Pf^hat  is  truth?  S.  John  i8:  37-8. 

Then  said  Jesus  to  those  Jews  which  believed  on  him: 
If  ye  continue  in  my  word,  then  are  ye  my  disciples  indeed. 
And  ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you 
free.  S.  John  8:  31-2. 

Within  twenty  years  after  the  landing  of  the 
Pilgrim  Fathers  there  was  founded  in  New 
Towne,  the  future  Cambridge,  a  college,  the 
avowed  purpose  of  which  was,  as  the  stranger 
may  read  from  the  inscription  at  the  Main  Gate 
facing  the  First  Church,  to  secure  a  continuance 
of  a  godly  and  learned  ministry  for  New  Eng- 
land when  their  first  pastors  should  lie  moulder- 
ing in  the  dust.  This  was  in  1636,  and  within  a 
short  time  it  received  the  name  of  its  first  bene- 
factor for  its  own,  and  became  Harvard  College 

46 


A  Great  University ,  Its  Course  and  Degree     47 

in  memory  of  John  Harvard,  minister  of  the 
church  in  Charlestown.  There  is  no  single  finer 
thing  at  Harvard  to-day  than  the  statue  of  John 
Harvard  sitting  thoughtful  and  intent  near  Me- 
morial Hall,  and  the  simple  words  on  the  base, 
"John  Harvard,  Founder,"  compare  favorably 
with  the  rather  lengthy  inscriptions  to  which  Har- 
vard runs. 

It  was  a  small  foundation,  that  original  Har- 
vard College,  but  it  was  truly  as  the  Harvard 
Ode  says  *'the  first  fruits  of  the  wilderness,"  and 
if  meagre  for  long  years  in  equipment  and 
scholarship,  how  rich  it  was  in  promise  and  in  the 
development  of  men  of  character  and  worth! 
Much  Latin  and  Greek  of  a  kind,  some  very  ele- 
mentary mathematics,  some  attention  to  writing 
clearly  and  to  speaking,  a  little  philosophy,  that 
was  about  all  the  College  offered,  a  veritable 
"oatmeal  porridge"  of  education,  the  modern 
student  would  be  apt  to  say.  But  you  remember 
perhaps  how  upon  BoswelPs  praising  oatmeal  and 
Dr.  Johnson's  bursting  forth:  "Oatmeal!  Faugh! 
In  Scotland  the  food  of  men,  in  England  the  food 
of  horses!"  Bozzy  countered  nicely  by  replying: 
"Ay,  Doctor,  and  where  will  you  find  finer  men 


48.  College  and  Religion 

and  finer  horses?"  The  limited  curriculum  was 
soundly  learned,  and  by  it  the  soil  of  those  young 
New  England  minds  was  broken  for  the  sowing 
of  great  thoughts.  If  at  the  Harvard  College 
of  that  day  the  student's  field  was  circumscribed, 
perhaps  it  would  be  fair  to  say  that  in  the  Har- 
vard University  of  to-day  the  field  is  all  too  vast. 
And  what  a  great  university  the  tiny  college 
of  the  seventeenth  century  has  grown  to  be  I  Old 
Massachusetts  Hall  that  carries  us  back  two  hun- 
dred years  is  but  one  among  many  brethren  to- 
day. In  that  dear  old  yard  with  its  lofty  elms 
and  green  lawns,  a  place  whose  quaint  simplicity 
is  represented  in  the  homely  word  *'yard,"  have 
grown  up  many  structures  dedicated  to  all  the 
ologies,  with  the  plain  old  dormitories  Stoughton, 
Hollis,  and  Holworthy,  still  standing  among  them 
as  the  landmarks  of  venerable  tradition.  And 
away  beyond  the  old  yard,  which  no  doubt  seemed 
ample  room  for  the  college  of  early  days,  the 
great  university  has  spread,  evep  seeking  new 
acres  of  earth's  fields  as  the  field  of  knowledge 
grows.  For  Harvard  jias  been  true  to  university 
tradition  and  has  followed  the  gleam;  where  a 
new  trail  of  truth  seemed  to  open.  Harvard  has 


A  Great  University ^  Its  Course  and  Degree     49 

been  ever  ready  to  pursue  it.  "Let  us  follow  the 
argument  whithersoever  it  leads,"  Socrates  used 
to  say  to  his  circle,  and  could  you  think  of  a  finer 
inscription  to  be  written  over  the  front  gate  of 
any  university  that  was  sincerely  interested  in 
learning?  Let  us  not  just  follow  the  argument 
for  a  while  till  we  see  if  it  is  going  to  bring  us 
into  conflict  with  the  religious  and  economic  con- 
ventions of  society;  no,  let  us  have  the  courage  to 
follow  it  whithersoever  it  leads,  even  if  that  be 
to  loss  of  supposed  friends  and  discomfort  and 
some  real  unhappiness  for  the  time  being.  I  make 
bold  to  think  poorly  of  a  university  training  that 
has  not  inspired  students  with  the  "whitherso- 
ever" idea  of  Socrates,  and  the  success  of  a  uni- 
versity should  be  measured  by  the  spirit  of  in-  / 
quiry  it  arouses  in  its  scholars.  If  it  is  doing/ 
that,  then  there  is  no  endowment  too  precious 
for  the  state  to  give  such  an  institution  or  for 
private  benefaction  to  provide.  It  is  the  chief 
glory  of  Harvard  University  that  in  It  academic 
freedom  to  think  out  and  to  speak  out  exists 
practically  unchallenged. 

There  was  another  founder  once,  a  preacher 
like  John  Harvard,  who  established  In  his  life- 


50  College  and  Religion 

time  a  sort  of  peripatetic  college,  picking  up  his 
students  everywhere.  You  remember  how  he 
found  them.    There  were  two  of  them  who  were 

/  fishing,  and  the  teacher  said:  ''Come  along  to 
my  school  and  learn  a  greater  fishing  trade  than 
that,  the  fishing  for  men's  souls!"  One  was  fol- 
lowing the  plough,  another  had  a  dull  job  in  the 
Customs  House^a  third  was  a  young  doctor  with- 
out a  practice, — all  of  these  heard  the  Founder's 
call  and  were  prompt  to  enroll  in  this  strolling 
university,  the  history  of  which  has  occupied  ever 
since  so  large  a  space  on  the  canvas  of  human 
history.  Were  there  any  academfc  inducements 
held  out  to  them  such  as  the  B.A.'s  and  M.Sc.'s 
and  Ph.D.'s  and  all  the  other  alphabet  of  decora- 
tions that  glitters  before  the  student  of  to-day? 
Was  there  any  prescribed  course  for  them  to  fol- 
low or  was  all  work  just  one  glorious  elective 
after  another  in  the  school  of  Jesus?    Was  it  a 

A  school  of  really  high  aims,  or  was  it,  like  some 
,  modern  institutions,  founded  to  bolster  up  ancient 
prejudices  and  decayed  superstitions? 

In  the  second  passage  I  read  you,  Jesus,  after 
challenging  strenuously  a  hostile  public  opinion, 
speaks  again  in  the  midst  of  a  group  of  those  who 


A  Great  University,  Its  Course  and  Degree     51 

had  believed  on  him  and  speaks  so  plainly  that 
many  even  of  these  go  their  ways  and  walk  no 
more  with  him.  What  a  strange  college  head  is 
this,  boldly  daring  to  offend  students  and  to  send 
them  away  because  he  knows  that  they  are  not  fit 
for  the  course  he  has  in  view,  a  course  which  will 
lead  through  Gethsemane  to  Calvary!  But 
among  the  words  he  utters  at  that  time  we  find 
some  that  deal  with  Jesus'  view  of  the  possibility 
of  reaching  truth  and  the  way  of  coming  at  it. 
"If  ye  continue  in  my  word,  then  are  ye  my  dis- 
ciples indeed,  and  ye  shall  know  the  truth."  *'Con-  ^ 
tinuing  in  the  word," — there  you  have  the  condi- 
tion laid  down  upon  the  fulfilling  of  which  you 
may  remain  in  college ;  by  so  continuing  you  show 
yourselves  ^'disciples  indeed,"  or,  as  we  should 
say,  real  students.  And  what  is  the  net  result 
of  so  continuing  and  of  being  disciples  indeed? 
Why,  "ye  shall  know  the  truth," — a  liberal  edu-^ 
cation,  you  see,  the  thing  so  often  talked  about 
at  college  and  so  seldom  got.  This  is  no  unat- 
tractive calendar,  this  of  the  school  of  Jesus,  espe- 
cially in  this  last  result  so  surely  promised;  let  us 
investigate  it  a  little. 

"Continuing  in  my  word," — I  do  not  see  that 


52  College  and  Religion 

we  must  seek  to  attach  to  that  phrase  any  mystic 
or  peculiar  significance;  It  seems  to  me  to  indicate 
nothing  more  than  abiding  by  the  Teacher's  rule 
of  life,  using  It  constantly,  illustrating  it,  so  far 
as  may  be,  in  every  deed  and  in  every  word.  And 
did  he  then  give,  as  other  masters  have  done,  any 
rule  of  life,  any  "word"  whereby  we  might  walk? 
Do  you  remember  the  story  of  that  shrewd  and 
clever  man  of  law  who  stood  up  to  tempt  him 
and  asked:  ''Master,  what  shall  I  do  to  Inherit 
eternal  life?"  and  was  made  according  to  the 
soundest  pedagogy  to  give  the  answer  himself: 
"Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart  and  with  all  thy  soul  and  with  all  thy 
strength  and  with  all  thy  mind,  and  thy  neighbor 
as  thyself."  "Ay,"  said  the  Master,  "thus  do 
and  thou  shalt  live." 

Eternal  life  begins  here  and  now,  since  only 
by  our  life  now  are  we  prepared  to  step  into  life 
hereafter,  so  that  the  answer  to  the  man  of  law 
gives  the  key  for  all  life;  "this  do  and  thou  shalt 
live,"  now  and  evermore.  Love  the  Lord  thy 
God  with  all  thy  powers;  put  thyself  body,  soul, 
and  spirit  in  harmony  with  the  Eternal  Purposes ; 
get  in  tune  with  the  Infinite ;  be  a  co-worker  with 


A  Great  University,  Its  Course  and  Degree     53 

God,  help  him  to  realize  his  work  of  creation  by 
being  loyal,  kind,  upright,  honest,  pure,  by  identi- 
fying thyself  with  all  those  great  moral  forces 
of  the  world  to  which  life  points  through  the  ages 
of  experience  as  to  beacon-lights.  Love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself,  but  lay  not  in  thy  zeal  for  thy 
neighbor  too  little  stress  upon  thyself.  Cultivate 
thyself,  read,  study,  mark,  learn,  inwardly  digest, 
get  to  love  good  music,  to  appreciate  great  books, 
to  hang  fondly  upon  rare  pictures;  raise  thine 
own  level  and  with  it  shall  rise  thy  love  for  thy 
neighbor,  thy  desire  that  he  too  may  enter  in  to 
the  kingdom  of  the  Beautiful  and  the  Good. 

And  if  we  continue  in  his  word,  if  we  co-oper- 
ate with  God  in  his  great  purposes  as  revealed  in 
experience  and  marked  out  by  history,  and  if  we 
cultivate  ourselves  and  love  our  neighbor  as  our- 
selves, what  shall  be  our  reward?  Mark  you,  we 
are  elevated  to  the  glorious  company  of  disciples, 
discipuli,  pupils,  students.  What  a  rare  privilege  I 
The  student  always  thinks  the  teacher  is  to  be  ^ 
envied,  the  teacher  constantly  envies  the  student 
the  chance  that  is  his  to  go  apart  and  study,  un- 
burdened by  routine  and  committee  meetings. 
Some   fortunate   ones   are   able   to  devote  their 


54  College  and  Religion 

lives  to  study,  and  the  mark  of  a  rising  civiliza- 
tion will  be  the  extent  to  which  we  make  it  more 
possible  for  the  deserving  to  do  so.  Disciples 
indeed!  Much  as  I  admire  the  winners  of  the 
V.C.  and  the  D.S.O.  and  the  D.C.M.  and  B.A.'s 
and  Ph.D.'s  and  LL.D.'s,  I  admire  still  more 
those  who  are  called  to  God's  school  to  be  "dis- 
ciples indeed."  I  do  not  know  that  they  will  ever 
get  a  parchment  or  win  a  degree  such  as  other 
schools  have  to  offer,  but  I  am  certain  that  they 
are  promised  a  wonderful  knowledge,  and  that 
after  all  is  what  counts.  I  had  rather  have  the 
knowledge  without  the  degree  like  Charles  Dar- 
win who  upset  the  world  of  thought  than  the 
degree  without  the  knowledge  for  examples  of 
which  one  might  not  need  to  go  far  afield. 

And  what  is  this  promise?  What  is  the  prom- 
ise made  in  the  calendar  of  God's  school  for  those 
who  are  enrolled  for  its  courses  as  "disciples  in- 
deed?" "And  ye  shall  know  the  truth."  We  go  V 
into  this  school,  matriculating  by  loving  God  and 
our  neighbor  and  ourselves,  and  we  shall  know 
the  truth.  What  truth?  Of  science?  The  root 
of  life,  the  secret  of  the  rocks,  the  magic  of  the 
elements?    Oh,  no,  not  that!     Of  history?    The 


A  Great  University,  Its  Course  and  Degree     55 

real  right  and  wrong  of  things,  the  Inwardness 
of  the  motive  for  this  and  that?  Oh,  no,  not 
that!  Of  politics?  The  best  form  of  govern- 
ment, the  best  way  of  administering  the  best  form 
and  of  rectifying  the  less  good?  Oh,  no,  not 
that!  What  truth  then?  Friends,  the  truth  that 
will  dawn  upon  us  in  proportion  to  the  soundness 
of  our  matriculation  knowledge  in  Jesus'  law  of 
life  is  this,  that  above  science  and  history  and 
politics  and  literature  and  language  and  art, 
comes  the  question  of  our  integration  into  the 
Eternal  Not-Ourselves,  the  question  of  our  rela- 
tionship to  God  and  man  not  as  scientists  or  poli- 
ticians or  men  of  letters  or  linguists  or  artists,  but 
as  men  and  women  with  pulsing  human  hearts. 
That,  I  believe.  Is  the  answer  to  Pilate's  question: 
What  Is  truth?  and  I  think  that  Jesus'  whole  life 
and  his  death  are  a  commentary  in  support  of  this 
fundamental  proposition,  that  you  must  as  a  hu- 
man soul  apart  from  all  your  dignities  and  pre- 
tensions get  into  touch  with  God  and  all  other 
souls. 

I  said  there  was  no  degree  in  the  school  of  the 
"disciples  Indeed."  Perhaps  that  was  wrong,  for 
hear  the   rest:  ''and  the  truth  shall  make  you 


§6  College  and  Religion 

free."  How  one  almost  gasps  at  that  word! 
*'Free," — ^the  hopes  and  the  ambitions  of  suffer- 
ing humanity  are  gathered  in  that  word;  for  free- 
dom men  and  women  too  have  died  cheerfully 
and  bravely;  the  magic  of  freedom's  name  drew 
our  young  men  by  tens  of  thousands  overseas  to 
withstand  tyranny  rampant.  That  word  "free" 
has  been  ever  the  slave's  sigh  and  the  freeman's 
boast.  But  this  freedom  has  been  largely  a  ques- 
tion of  the  absence  of  physical  restraint;  it  can- 
not compare  with  the  freedom  that  truth  shall 
confer  upon  us.  The  freedom  truth  brings  in  the 
school  of  the  disciples  is  the  freedom  of  soul  that 
comes  to  the  man  who  has  realized  his  mission 
in  the  world  as  God's  partner.  For  him  life  takes 
on  a  larger  meaning;  God's  in  his  heaven  and  I 
am  on  the  earth  to  do  his  will,  not  a  mere  arbi- 
trary will  imperious  and  tyrannical  but  a  will  that 
is  seen  through  all  time  making  for  righteousness. 
Petty  tasks  grow  great,  little  spheres  large,  one 
talent  grows  to  five,  ten,  or  fifty  in  the  atmosphere 
of  the  New  Freedom.  I  am  free,  free,  no  subject 
of  a  tyrant  God  but  the  willing  abettor  of  Infinite 
Mind  and  Spirit  which  seeks  to  realize  itself  in 
its  dealings  with  mankind,  the  willing  helper  who 


A  Great  University,  Its  Course  and  Degree     57 

chooses  to  collaborate,  being  free  to  reject.  Is 
there  any  freedom  of  which  you  have  ever  heard 
or  read  to  compare  with  that? 

And  with  this  freedom  comes  peace.  Think  of 
that,  to  be  at  peace  and  to  be  free.  What  nation 
would  not  be  satisfied  with  that  or  what  individ- 
ual? Well,  upon  our  great  freedom  in  God 
supervenes  peace,  the  peace  of  God  that  passeth 
all  understanding.  When  the  soul  knows  itself 
free  and  uses  that  freedom  to  re-dedicate  itself 
to  the  great  purposes  of  the  Eternal,  there  comes 
to  it  inevitably  a  sense  of  abiding  peace,  and  by 
that  we  may  best  measure  our  progress  in  free- 
dom. Poor  Pilate,  though  the  procurator  of  the 
Caesar,  knew  neither  freedom  nor  peace;  Jesus, 
the  Galilean  peasant,  knew  both.  We  are  per- 
mitted to  enter  into  a  like  experience,  one  that 
we  can  hardly  afford  to  forego,  to  know  the  truth 
and  to  have  the  truth  make  us  free. 

And  so  the  end  of  true  university  training  like 
the  object  in  God's  school  which  I  have  been  dis- 
cussing, is  the  attainment  of  freedom  through 
truth.  It  is  clear  that  much  so-called  university 
training,  measured  by  this  test,  is  sadly  to  lack, 
but  the  ideal  remains.     Even  so  there  are  many 


58  College  and  Religion 

who  think  they  are  quite  far  up  in  God's  school 
and  have  as  a  matter  of  fact  no  matriculation 
standing;  never  mind,  their  assumptions  cannot 
affect  the  truth  for  which  God's  school  stands.  It 
is  in  the  combination  of  the  purposes  of  these 
two  schools,  the  university  and  life,  that  great- 
ness of  soul  lies,  and  no  one  can  afford  to  aim  at 
less  than  greatness.  It  is  for  few  to  attain  the 
seats  of  the  mighty  but  not  all  the  mighty  are 
great;  we  may  all  be  great,  Truth's  freemen, 
God's  noblemen.  I  hope  you  will  not  be  satisfied 
till  you  have  added  the  degree  that  is  conferred 
in  the  school  of  God  to  your  academic  distinc- 
tions. I  do  not  know  any  better  wish  for  your 
happiness  with  which  I  could  send  you  away ;  it  is 
the  secret  of  happiness  that  I  have  told  you.  May 
f  you  find  it. 


FAINT  YET  PURSUING 

*'And  Gideon  came  to  Jordan  and  passed  over^  he  and 
the  three  hundred  men  that  were  with  him,  faint  yet  pur- 
suing" Judges  8:4. 

The  primitive  traits  in  our  nature  are  mani- 
fold but  elusive;  they  dwell  unnumbered  in  the 
inner  chambers  of  our  spirit  and  yet  we  know  for 
them  no  other  name  than  Legion,  for  they  are 
many.  They  are  within  us  subtle  undertones  that 
stir  to  music  when  in  speech  or  written  word  the 
charmed  vocables  emerge  that  can  play  the  chords 
strung  first  in  our  remote  forefathers  and  trans- 
mitted to  us  by  heredity's  mysterious  laws  after 
thousands  of  years;  there  are  passions  that  rouse 
them  from  a  sleep  that  was  so  death-like  that  we 
had  not  known  they  even  existed  in  us.  In  a  sense 
other  than  is  usually  given  to  the  phrase  we  are 
the  "heirs  of  all  the  ages";  there  abides  in  us  still 
some  figment  of  those  generations  that  have 
passed  before,  bound  up  in  the  marvel  of  your 
personality  and  of  mine.     And  thus   it  is  that 

59 


6o  College  and  Religion 

hearts  that  are  gentle  and  that  have  never  medi- 
tated violence,  feel  a  surge  of  emotion,  a  thrill 
of  ecstasy,  as  they  read  of  the  jousts  of  Arthur's 
knights  of  the  Table  Round  where  spears  splin- 
tered and  knight  and  horse  went  down  thunder- 
ously. It  is  the  joy  of  battle  that  moved  in  the 
heart  of  our  remote  sires  in  old,  unhappy,  far-off 
days  when  fighting  was  the  rule  and  peace  the 
exception,  when  men  could  truly  speak  of  "the 
bloom  and  the  beauty,  the  splendor  of  spears." 
And  it  is  because  of  this  no  doubt  that  many  of 
the  narratives  of  the  Old  Testament,  utterly  to 
be  condemned  on  any  logical  or  humanitarian 
grounds,  are  still  read  with  avidity  by  souls  that 
in  reality  are  living  within  the  dispensation  of  the 
Newer  and  the  Better  Testament. 

It  is  among  these  narratives  that  the  story  of 
Gideon  which  I  read  you  in  part  this  morning 
falls.  You  recall  how  it  ran.  There  is  Israel's  u 
primitively  conceived  God  closely  following  the 
doings  of  his  chosen  people  and  speaking  directly 
to  Gideon,  the  marshal  of  the  host.  There  is  the 
self-elimination  permitted  to  the  faint-heart  and 
the  coward,  and  there  is  the  quaint  test  proposed 
for  the  special  selection  of  the  instruments  of 


Faint  Yet  Pursuing  6 1 

Jehovah's  vengeance.  There  is  the  MIdlanite's 
dream  and  its  sudden  and  fearful  interpretation; 
there  is  the  attack  with  its  odd  stratagem  of 
pitchers,  lamps,  and  trumpets,  and  that  resound- 
ing battle-cry:  "The  sword  of  the  Lord  and  of 
Gideon.'^  And  then  the  pursuit  of  the  shattered 
host  beyond  Jordan  by  Gideon's  little  band, 
"faint  yet  pursuing." 

A  story  for  a  story's  sake  needs  absolutely  no 
excuse,  and  the  narrative  of  Gideon  and  the  three 
hundred  is  a  story  of  adventure  well  and  graphi- 
cally told.  It  is  a  story  of  resource  and  courage, 
even  if  it  ends  in  blood  and  iron  as  well.  I  am 
truly  sorry  for  the  person  whose  blood  does  not 
pulse  faster  and  whose  every  nerve  does  not  tingle 
as  he  reaches  this  point: 

And  the  three  companies  blew  the  trumpets, 
and  brake  the  pitchers,  and  held  the  lamps  in 
their  left  hands  and  the  trumpets  in  their  right 
hands  to  blow  withal ;  and  they  cried :  The  sword 
of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon. 

Oh,  the  rush  of  that  sudden  surprise,  the  wild 
fury  of  the  midnight  attack,  the  glare  of  the 
lamps,  the  blare  of  the  trumpets,  and  the  raucous 
chorus  of  that  pealing  battle-cry ! 


62  College  and  Religion 

It  is  a  bad  fashion  that  at  once  proceeds  to 
allegorize  in  every  last  detail  a  story  such  as  that, 
which  was  to  the  Israelites  no  allegory  whatever 
but  a  national  legend  of  surpassing  worth.  As 
well  try  to  allegorize  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  Drake, 
Frobisher,  Hawkins,  and  Sir  Richard  Grenville 
of  the  **Revenge";  they  are  no  allegory  to  sons 
of  the  British  stock  but  a  part  and  parcel  of  our 
rude  island  story.  I  do  not  propose  to  fall  into 
the  trap,  but  I  confess  that  my  fancy  has  been 
caught  with  one  phrase  of  the  story  particularly 
as  being  an  inspiration  to  all  who  fight  even 
though  on  other  fields  than  those  of  war;  it  is  the 
phrase  that  ended  the  lesson,  "faint  yet  pursu- 
ing." Perhaps  I  may  be  excused  for  making 
through  this  a  transition  from  Gideon  to  our- 
selves, from  his  warfare  with  Midianites  to  our 
own  struggles  with  ourselves  and  our  environ- 
ment. 

Not  all  that  I  have  to  say  will  be  appreciated 
as  much  by  you  who  are  young  as  by  those  who 
have  travelled  somewhat  further  along  the  way 
of  life.  You  young  people  can  sense  the  value  of 
that  word  "pursuing,"  but  hardly  yet,  let  us  hope, 
has  there  entered  into  your  lexicon  of  life  the 


Faint  Yet  Pursuing  63 

word  "faint."  But  it  sometimes  happens  that 
words  we  hear  at  one  time,  fall  then  upon  stony 
ground  and  bring  forth  no  fruit,  while  later  on 
in  other  associations  they  are  recalled  and  spring 
marvellously  to  life  and  bring  forth  a  return  some 
thirty,  some  sixty,  and  some  an  hundred  fold# 
You  cannot  yet  in  the  merciful  providence  of  God 
appraise  the  faintness  of  later  days,  but  I  should 
like  to  think  when  that  faintness  comes  to  any 
one  of  you,  some  word  of  mine  may  leap  to  you 
along  the  years,  some  word  that  may^  keep  you,  ^ 
however  faint,  still  pursuing.  As  for  those  others 
of  us  who  have  to  confess  to  increasing  age  and 
occasional  spells  of  faintness  under  the  burden 
and  heat  of  the  day,  no  word  of  heartening  or 
Encouragement  ever  needs  a  special  plea  by  way 
of  justification.  You  have  known  what  it  means 
sometimes  to  wonder  how  it  would  be  if  some 
morning  you  just  did  not  wake  up  at  all  to  re- 
sume those  duties  that  seem  to  be  grinding  out 
your  very  soul ;  you  have  been  half  in  love  with  ^ 
easeful  death.  Your  soul  has  been  rasped  and 
torn  in  wrestling  with  pitiless  detractors  and  in 
answering  false  accusations;  you  have  been  put 
upon  the  various  racks  that  society  ingeniously  '^ 


64  College  and  Religion 

applies  to  lovers  of  the  beautiful  and  the  true. 
Your  life  looks  like  a  failure  in  retrospect  and 
in  prospect  like  torment.  You  have  become  very 
faint,  and  pursuing  does  not  any  longer  appeal 
to  you.  You  are  wrestling  In  your  Gethsemane 
with  black  doubts ;  you  pray  that  this  cup  may 
pass  from  you,  but  you  are  a  little  doubtful  about 
adding  as  Jesus  did:  "nevertheless,  Father,  not 
my  will  but  thine  be  done." 

It  does  not  follow  that  your  friends  or  even 
your  family  know  how  faint  you  are;  they  see  In 
you  a  little  malaise,  a  bad  headache,  which  leaves 
you  desirous  of  being  left  alone  more  than  usual, 
or  perhaps  they  find  you  indisposed  to  talk.  It  Is 
greatly  to  the  credit  of  our  humanity  that  so 
many  wrestlings  of  soul,  yes,  even  to  the  utter- 
ance, as  the  old  knights  used  to  say,  are  carefully 
concealed  from  those  who  would  be  unnecessarily 
troubled  and  disturbed  by  the  black  cloud  that 
hovers  over  us.  Men  fight  their  soul-battles  as 
they  go  about  their  business,  women  as  they  ar- 
range the  details  of  a  household  day,  and  often 
the  world  is  not  much  the  wiser.  "Never  morn- 
ing wore  to  evening  but  some  heart  did  break,'* 
but  for  each  one  that  succumbs  there  are  many 


Faint  Yet  Pursuing  6^ 

that  fight  the  same  battle  and  win  through  with 
blood  and  tears. 

Pursuing  seems  to  me,  objectively  in  the  story 
of  Gideon  and  subjectively  with  each  of  us,  to 
relate  to  ends  and  ideals.  Gideon's  purpose  was 
to  destroy  his  enemies  utterly;  his  aim  was  really 
then  to  obliterate  the  object  of  his  pursuit.  Our 
end  and  object  is  supposedly  different;  we  wish  to 
catch  up  with  our  ideals  not  to  destroy  them  but 
to  take  them  in  our  arms  of  affection  and  make 
them  our  own.  But  there  is  a  curious  fatality  in 
this  business  of  pursuing  ideals  after  all ;  so  often 
as  we  overtake  our  ideals,  we  really  slay  them, 
and  start  the  pursuit  anew.  The  ideal  that  you 
set  up  for  yourself  five,  ten,  fifteen  years  ago  you 
have  undoubtedly  in  some  measure  attained,  but 
the  attainment  was  unsatisfying  because  at  once 
you  realized  that  other  ideals  lay  ahead  and  that 
you  had  actually  caused  your  old  ideals  to  perish 
and  had  set  out  to  pursue  the  new.  And  so  you 
came  to  understand  that  there  are  many  senses 
in  which  "to  travel  is  better  than  to  arrive." 

This  shifting  character  of  ideals  is  something 
that  all  of  us  should  try  to  understand.  It  seems 
to  be  the  fashion  for  those  who  undertake  to  ad- 


66  College  and  Religion 

vise  young  people  upon  commencement  days  and 
other  such  high  days,  to  talk  to  them  a  great  deal 
about  preserving  their  ideals.  Well,  I  fear  that 
ideals  preserved  are  like  a  good  many  other  pre- 
served things,  excellent  museum  material  and 
nothing  more.  What  is  really  wrong  with  a  large 
number  of  people  of  mature  years  but  of  imma-  v 
ture  intellectuality  and  spirituality  is  that  they 
literally  fulfilled  the  advice  so  liberally  ministered 
to  them  and  preserved  their  first  ideals  till  these 
ideals  became  mummified  and  their  owners  with 
them.  Th€<>3.dvice  that  would  be  of  real  service 
would  be  to  tell  them  to  prepare  to  alter  their 
ideals  as  soon  as  they  found  themselves  overhaul- 
ing their  first  objective,  to  remind  them  that 
ideals  are  not  fixed  and  invariable  things,  and 
finally  to  add  by  way  of  warning  perhaps  that 
each  new  ideal  should  be  higher  and  harder  than 
the  last. 

Of  course  this  is  harder  to  explain  than  the 
other  and  harder  to  get  understood  too,  but  that 
does  not  excuse  either  speakers  or  hearers  from 
the  effort.  It  is  disconcerting  as  well  to  have  to 
learn  that  no  finality  in  ideals  can  be  prescribed.  '^ 
In  that  respect  ideals  are  like  learning.    There  is 


Faint  Yet  Pursuing  67 

no  finality  in  learning;  learning  is  a  quest  of  which 
we  do  not  know  the  end.  The  end  of  learning  is 
not  the  acquisition  of  a  body  of  facts  to  be  dis- 
charged upon  the  head  of  some  luckless  examiner ; 
it  is  the  pursuit  of  matter-of-fact  truth  from  one 
of  her  lairs  to  another.  The  attainment  of  some 
particular  point  in  this  quest  brings  no  finality; 
becoming  a  B.A.  or  an  M.A.  or  a  Ph.D.  brings 
no  release  so  far  as  the  cause  of  true  learning  is 
concerned.  Learning  is  a  road  that  runs  up  a 
hill  and  tops  a  crest  over  which  we  cannot  see. 
Ideals  likewise  are  elusive;  we  pursue  them  from 
one  stage  to  another,  and,  if  we  are  the  right  sort, 
we  shall  be  pursuing  them  to  the  journey's  end. 
But  I  hope  that  no  one  \^ill  think  that  the  alter- 
ation in  ideals  which  is  the  mark  of  a  truly  pro- 
gressive life  excuses  one  altogether  from  the  at- 
tempt to  cultivate  ideals.  As  well  say  that  be- 
cause there  is  no  known  finality  to  learning,  we 
should  abandon  research  and  give  up  the  cult  of 
knowledge.  Humanity  well  knows  that  we  can- 
not certainly  descry  the  end  of  knowledge,  and 
yet  in  every  civilized  state  large  expenditures  are 
made  to  advance  that  very  knowledge  the  end  of 
which  is  doubtful.     And  so  with  our  ideals;  we 


68  College  and  Religion 

cannot  certainly  affirm  that  you  at  twenty  must 
take  an  ideal  to  serve  you  through  all  your  life, 
or  even  promise  that  with  a  constant  adaptation 
of  ideals  you  will  achieve  a  definite  goal,  but  we 
do  not  think  for  a  moment  that  this  absolves  you 
from  the  necessity  of  ideals. 

Still,  the  cynic  might  ask,  as  in  every  age  he 
has  asked:  "Why  have  ideals  at  all  when  you 
admit  that  the  end  is  uncertain?  There  are  the 
pleasures  of  life  which  are  understandable,  im- 
mediately realizable,  and  unprovocative  of  dis- 
cussion about  abstract  ends."  Against  this  one 
can  set  with  confidence  all  the  belief  and  the  ex- 
perience of  the  race.  Here  it  is  again  as  it  is 
with  knowledge.  There  are  hosts  of  people  who 
have  little  or  no  use  for  knowledge  in  their  own 
lives,  but  they  will  nearly  all  join  in  the  opinion 
that  the  cultivation  of  truth,  the  pursuit  of  mat- 
ter-of-fact knowledge,  should  be  promoted  in  our 
universities.  So  with  ideals.  It  is  a  poor  sort  of 
business  man  or  professional  man  who  does  not 
lay  claim  to  ideals  for  the  conduct  of  his  business 
or  his  profession;  the  ideals  may  be  low  in  all 
conscience  or  he  may  in  practice  contradict  them, 
having  one  set  of  standards  for  public  speech  and 


Faint  Yet  Pursuing  69 

another  for  private  action,  but  the  fact  that  he 
will  talk  of  ideals  at  all  is  a  tribute  to  the  power 
of  the  ideal  in  the  world.  Ideals  are  the  voice  of 
God  to  humanity;  you  may  avoid  the  call  of  that 
voice  as  it  comes  through  this  medium  or  that, 
but  I  do  not  see  how  you  can  actually  avoid  it  in 
human  experience  and  in  the  consensus  of  human 
opinion.  After  all  there  was  something  in  that 
dictum  of  St.  Augustine's:  securus  ijdicat  orhis 
t  err  arum. 

And  now  you  will  have  no  difficulty  in  under- 
standing why  in  the  pursuit  of  the  ideal  we  grow 
faint.    Through  the  arch  of  the  ideal 

Gleams   that   untravelled   world   whose   margin 

fades 
Forever  and  forever  when  I  move, 

and  it  is  just  because  the  margin  fades  and  the 
delectable  land  retreats  before  us  that  we  grow 
weary  and  faint.  We  yearn  for  finality;  experi- 
ence teaches  us  that  there  is  none,  and  we  are  in- 
clined to  resent  the  discovery.  Still,  the  laws  of 
life  are  here ;  they  were  here  before  we  were  and 
will  abide  after  we  are  gone.  They  sprang  out 
of  untracked  eternity  and  to  eternity  they  will 
stand  unchallenged.     Like  Margaret  Fuller  then 


70  College  and  Religion 

we  must  "accept  the  Universe"  and  make  up  our 
minds  that  happiness  is  most  to  be  realized  in 
conforming  to  its  laws.  And  of  these  laws  none 
is  more  certain  than  just  this,  that  we  slay  our 
ideal  when  we  attain  it.  That  is  why  I  say  so 
often  that  life  is  a  quest  that  never  ceases.  In  so 
far  as  we  are  true  men  and  women  we  are  all 
Knights  of  the  Round  Table  questing  after  the 
Holy  Grail,  the  vision  of  the  perfection  of  the 
spirit.  Among  us  all  there  will  be  few  Sir  Gala- 
hads  to  whom  was  vouchsafed  the  revelation  of 
the  holy  vessel 

"Clothed  in  white  samite  or  a  luminous  cloud" 

but  there  is  no  reason  why  there  should  not  be 
many  a  Sir  Bors  who  despite  imperfections  of 
character  had  a  vision  which  never  faded  from 
his  mind  and  spiritualized  all  his  life  thereafter. 
And  remember  how  the  Knights  of  the  Round 
Table  fared  in  that  quest,  how  they  endured  all 
manner  of  hard  living,  how  they  sojourned  in  the 
open  under  no  canopy  save  heaven,  how  they 
fared  afar 

"O'er  moor  and  fen,  o'er  crag  and  torrent," 
amid  storms  and  cold,  through  strange  peoples. 


Faint  Yet  Pursuing  71 

in  peril  of  their  lives,  and  with  constant  challenge 
of  battle;  they  were  often  very  faint  with  their 
pursuing,  very  heart-sick,  very  weary.  To  be 
sure  we  have  not  the  outward  glamor  of  knight- 
hood about  us,  but  it  is  ours  to  live  the  life  of 
chivalry  none  the  less;  we  too  may  win  worship 
by  knightly  deeds,  and  we  too  carry  shields  of 
the  spirit  whereon  is  graven  an  escutcheon  that 
we  may  not  sully  upon  pain  of  shame  that  burns 
and  stings.  Our  jousting  days  come  sometimes 
when  we  are  riding  triumphant  in  the  lists  and 
bearing  down  opponents  with  our  well-placed 
spears  while  the  pavilions  ring  with  applause,  3ut 
there  are  the  other  days  too  when  the  search  for 
the  ideal  carries  us  far  away  from  Camelot  and 
the  Table  Round  with  all  its  goodly  fellowship 
into  the  land  of  dragons  and  oppressive  men,  a 
land  where  every  turn  in  the  woodland  trail  may 
bring  a  challenge  and  a  combat. 

There  is  no  purpose  served  by  denying  that  in 
those  days  we  shall  grow  faint;  it  would  be  but 
contradicting  the  experience  of  the  elders  and 
creating  an  atmosphere  of  delusion  for  the  young. 
The  real  point  is  to  consider  what  shall  sustain 
us  in  those  days  of  faintness  when  we  doubt  the 


72  College  and  Religion 

value  of  those  ideals  we  have  been  following,  in 
those  days  when  we  would  fain  make  an  end  of 
further  ado.  I  think  there  are  two  such  things, 
and  you  know  them  as  well  as  I;  they  are  retro- 
spect and  prospect.  If  a  situation  is  bad,  the 
only  elevation  of  spirit  you  can  win  is  gained  by 
looking  elsewhere,  not  to  the  neglect,  mark  you, 
of  the  desperate  situation,  but  to  the  heartening 
of  ourselves  for  handling  it.  Retrospect  serves 
to  remind  us  of  those  golden  days  when  we 
seemed  to  be  establishing  contact  with  our  ideals ; 
they  were  days  of  rare  inspiration  for  each  one 
who  has  known  them,  those  days  when 

this  earth  he  walks  on  seems  not  earth, 
This  light  that  strikes  his  eye-ball  is  not  light. 
The  air  that  smites  his  forehead  is  not  air. 
But  vision,  yea,  his  very  hand  and  foot. 
In  moments  when  he  feels  he  cannot  die. 
And  knows  himself  no  vision  to  himself. 
Nor  the  high  God  a  vision. 

To  lay  up  by  earnest  striving  the  memories  of 
such  days  for  ourselves  is  the  best  insurance 
against  growing  faint  as  we  pursue ;  they  form  the 
gallery  of  the  soul  where  it  may  in  moments  of 
dejection  contemplate  the  thing  that  it  hath  been 
and  draw  strength  from  the  view. 


Faint  Yet  Pursuing  73 

And  then  there  is  prospect.  We  are  tempo- 
rarily disillusioned,  or  our  ideals  are  undergoing 
one  of  those  shifts  that  come  periodically  in  a 
normal  life,  and  the  present  seems  to  afford  noth- 
ing to  look  out  upon;  with  retrospect  over 
brighter  days  let  us  couple  the  prospect  of  days 
ahead  when  the  clouds  shall  lift  again.  The  wind 
does  not  always  lash  the  trees  nor  the  storm 
lower  from  the  sky;  there  is  radiance  still  ahead, 
be  sure.  From  the  temporary  disillusionment  we 
shall  recover  and  with  a  deeper  faith  as  our  re- 
ward; we  shall  find  presently  new  ideals  just  a 
little  higher  than  those  we  have  slain  by  over- 
taking. And  apart  from  all  this  commonplace 
philosophy,  we  are  Knights  of  the  Great  Adven- 
ture, which  of  itself  always  irradiates  the  future, 
and  makes  the  present,  however  hard,  seem  but 
a  stepping  stone  to  experiences  rich  and  strange. 
It  was  the  spirit  of  Ulysses  of  Ithaca : 

The  lights  begin  to  twinkle  from  the  rocks ; 
The  long  day  wanes;  the  slow  moon  climbs;  the 

deep 
Moans    round   with   many   voices.      Come,    my 

friends, 
'Tis  not  too  late  to  seek  a  newer  world. 
Push  off,  and  sitting  well  in  order  smite 


74  'College  and  Religion 

The  sounding  furrows;  for  my  purpose  holds 
To  sail  beyond  the  sunset  and  the  baths 
Of  all  the  western  stars  until  I  die. 
It  may  be  that  the  gulfs  will  wash  us  down; 
It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  happy  isles 
And  see  the  great  Achilles  whom  we  knew. 
Though  much  is  taken,  much  abides,  and  though 
We  are  not  now  that  strength  which  In  old  days 
Moved  earth  and  heaven,  that  which  we  are,  we 

are, — 
One  equal  temper  of  heroic  hearts. 
Made  weak  by  time  and  fate,  but  strong  In  will 
To  strive,  to  seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield. 

This  is  the  spirit  of  the  Great  Adventure,  and 
it  comes  from  one  who  had  grown  faint  often 
enough  in  the  wars  at  Troy  and  the  long  wander- 
ings after  before  he  reached  his  rocky  Ithaca. 
"Though  much  is  taken,  much  abides,"  and  he 
knows  the  worth  and  the  strength  of  the  resolute 
will  that  recuperates  itself. 

O  well  for  him  whose  will  is  strong, 
He  suffers  but  he  cannot  suffer  wrong, 
He  suffers,  but  he  cannot  suffer  long. 

But  that  is  not  quite  all.     There  is  a  touch  of 
finality  to  our  ideals  that  I  must  not  pass  by;  thatt 
touch   is   their   association  with   God.     All   our 
ideals  lead  up  to  him  and  in  him  find  their  end; 
just  what  that  end  is  and  Its  ultimate  significance 


Faint  Yet  Pursuing  75 

no  system  of  philosophy  or  theology  has  ever  at- 
tempted to  show.  It  is  here  that  faith  comes  in 
as  faith  inevitably  must  somewhere  and  some- 
how; God  is  the  end,  and  we  must  trust  God 
therefore  for  the  validity  of  that  end.  And  then 
too  with  regard  to  the  relation  of  our  ideals  to 
God,  we  are  to  remember  that,  so  far  as  we  may 
judge,  this  world  of  God's  is  incomplete,  and  that 
for  its  completion,  our  collaboration  is  needed, 
else  the  work  will  not  be  done  as  it  should  be. 

Creation's  Lord,  we  give  thee  thanks 
That  this  thy  world  is  incomplete. 
That  battle  calls  our  marshalled  ranks. 
That  work  awaits  our  hands  and  feet. 

What  though  the  kingdom  long  delay 
And  still  with  haughty  foes  must  cope? 
It  gives  us  that  for  which  to  pray, 
A  field  for  toil  and  faith  and  hope. 

The  real  reason,  it  may  be,  for  this  constant  shift 
of  ideals  and  for  the  faintness  that  comes  to  us 
in  the  long  pursuit  of  the  unattainable,  as  it  seems 
to  us,  is  that  it  is  a  section  of  the  cosmic  plan 
revealed  in  the  life  of  each  one  of  us.  The  watch- 
word and  keynote  of  the  universal  scheme  would 
seem  to  be  development,  and  this  is  an  assiduous 


76  College  and  Religion 

process.  It  is  a  process  that  means  change  and 
readjustment,  and  changes  and  readjustments 
bring  weariness  oftentimes.     Still 

Since  what  we  choose  is  what  we  are 
And  what  we  love  we  yet  shall  be, 
The  goal  may  ever  shine  afar, 
The  will  to  win  it  makes  us  free. 

The  very  source  of  our  freedom  is  the  liberty  to 
pursue  the  ideal,  and  it  is  this  pursuit  brings 
weariness,  and  the  weariness  earns  the  liberty, 
and  there  your  circle  is  complete.  Your  liberty 
is  bought  with  a  price.  That  too  1  feel  is  part  of 
the  cosmic  plan,  that  there  is  nothing  worth  while 
that  can  be  had  for  nothing. 

Finally  then  my  own  consolation  in  the  press 
of  unceasing  and  exacting  duties  is  the  belief  that 
the  things  I  do  are  minute  but  necessary  cogs  in 
the  mill  of  God,  and  that  the  whole  machinery  is 
impeded  to  the  extent  that  my  part  of  it  is  im- 
perfect. I  know  that  if  I  fail  Him,  God  cannot 
fully  develop  His  work  as  He  would  like  to  do.  It 
is  as  George  Eliot  wrote  in  her  poem  Stradi- 
varius : 

If  my  hand  slacked 
I  should  rob  God,  since  He  is  fullest  good. 


Faint  Yet  Pursuing  77 

Leaving  a  blank  instead  of  violins. 

//^  could  not  make  Antonio  Stradivari's  violins 

Without  Antonio. 

And  thus  by  the  very  demands  of  duty  I  rise  to 
the  divine,  or  realize  the  divine  that  is  in  me.  I 
shall  be  faint  but  I  shall  not  fail;  I  shall  be  still 
pursuing.  "The  sword  of  the  Lord  and  of 
Gideon." 


MAKING  THE  GRADE 

I  THINK  it  is  Punch  that  has  a  story  of  an  Eng- 
lish loafer  who  delivered  himself  as  follows: 
"Work!  W'enever  I  'ears  that  word,  I  goes  all 
of  a  tremble!"  There  are  those  who  without 
being  loafers  probably  feel  that  way  about  exam- 
inations; the  mere  word  sets  them  all  of  a  trem- 
ble. Few  there  be  who  look  with  favor  upon 
examinations,  but  remember  that  this  applies  to 
examiners  as  well  as  to  their  victims. 

The  examinee  thinks  that  examination  season 
is  a  time  when  the  examiner,  a  ruthless,  cruel, 
calculating  and  cunning  individual,  gloats  over  the 
sufferings  of  his  candidates  as  they  attempt  in  the 
words  of  the  negro  preacher  *'to  solve  de  insolu- 
ble, to  expHc  de  inexpHcable,  and  to  unscrew  de 
inscrutable."  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  (and  this 
is  quite  different  from  the  fiction  of  it)  the  ex- 
aminer sees  before  him  but  a  vista  of  thirty,  forty, 
or  even  a  hundred  and  forty  papers  in  which  the 
same  time-honored  passages  of  literature  and  the 

78 


Making  the  Grade  79 

same  immemorial  traditions  of  science  will  be  ex- 
hibited in  unbroken  monotony  until  the  drowsi- 
ness of  the  Lotos-Eaters*  Land  steals  over  him, 
and  he  becomes  quiescent  over  the  half-marked 
page,  just  an  ordinary  mortal  overcome  with 
sleep.  He  realizes  as  he  reads  the  futility  of 
examinations.  He  knows  that  they  are  in  some 
respects  sheer  matters  of  knack,  the  knack  which 
some  students  possess  for  writing  papers,  that 
often  they  are  matters  of  mere  chance,  success  or 
failure  turning  on  the  last  formula  at  which  the 
examinee  glanced  before  he  dropped  his  note- 
book and  advanced  with  a  firm  step  to  the  scaf- 
fold. Time  and  again  too  he  thinks  he  discerns 
under  a  confusion  of  words  a  probability  that  the 
question  is  really  being  answered,  and  then  he 
wonders  whether  the  information  is  really  there 
or  if  he  is  not  in  charity  supplying  the  key  that 
unlocks  the  riddle.  Futile  they  certainly  are,  but 
just  how  shall  we  dispense  with  them? 

And  of  course  the  examinee  reahzes  much  of 
this  futility  too.  He  knows  how  much  knack 
counts  for,  especially  if  he  has  the  gift  himself; 
it  will  spread  a  little  knowledge  to  a  wonderful 
thinness  over  quite  an  area.     Time  and  again  he 


8o  College  and  Religion 

has  probably  experienced,  now  with  joy,  now  with 
sorrow,  what  matters  of  freakish  chance  they  are, 
and  how  even  with  the  best  of  preparation  it  is 
still  necessary  that  the  luck  break  with  you  a  little 
at  least.  He  realizes  that  the  last  answer  he 
wrote  was  a  trifle  mixed  up,  but  time  pressed  and 
he  could  not  go  back  to  amend  or  clarify.  And 
knowing  all  these  things  and  considering  himself 
always  and  uniquely  the  sufferer,  he  is  apt  to  treat 
the  whole  process  as  a  more  or  less  amiable  hum- 
bug and  to  regard  examinations  as  series  of  select 
puzzles  for  the  mystification  of  the  student  and 
his  reduction  to  a  proper  state  of  humility  In 
the  intellectual  world. 

Of  course  there  is  justification  for  all  this. 
There  have  always  been  and  always  will  be  exam- 
inations that  are  unfair  both  in  conception  and 
phrasing.  There  are  papers  in  which  the  whole 
object  Is  to  show  the  examinee  that  he  knows 
nothing,  others  which  seem  designed  to  prove 
that  the  examiner  knows  everything.  This  of 
course  is  wrong.  To  demonstrate  to  a  student 
his  ignorance  is  poor  business  unless  it  be  for  the 
elimination  of  conceit  or  the  stimulation  of  effort; 
to  exhibit  your  learning  is  a  poor  piece  of  vanity 


Making  the  Grade  8 1 

in  a  world  which  is  such  a  guess-work  world  at 
best.  The  real  object  of  examinations  should  be 
to  ascertain,  subject  to  all  the  known  difficulties 
of  the  method,  the  relation  of  the  examinee  to  a 
broad  summary  of  the  year's  work;  the  more 
minute  investigations  should  have  been  made 
sooner.  But  one  has  to  be  at  the  game  a  long 
time  to  realize  this;  the  worst  examinations  are 
those  set  by  very  young  and  very  earnest  instruc- 
tors who  have  just  got  through  with  being  exam- 
ined themselves. 

One  of  the  most  delightful  things  about  exam- 
inations is  the  modesty,  real  or  affected,  of  ex- 
aminees when  the  ordeal  is  over.  To  be  sure,  I 
have  heard  that  girls  actually  get  together  and 
go  over  papers  they  have  written  and  compute 
their  percentages,  though  it  seems  too  horrible  to 
be  true,  but  among  the  lads  of  my  time  an  exam- 
ination once  written  was  absolutely  committed  to 
the  vasty  deep  of  the  oblivious  past,  and  the  hon- 
ored formula  of  reply  in  event  of  your  being 
asked  how  you  had  done  in  a  paper,  was  simply: 
"Oh,  I  guess  I  made  the  grade."  I  have  called 
it  an  honored  formula;  honor  strictly  required 
that  it  should  be  used  as  well  by  the  proudest  com- 


82  College  and  Religion 

petitor  as  by  the  poor  literalist  to  whom  the 
phrase  was  not  only  an  answer  to  a  friend  but  a 
prayer,  in  the  phrase  of  Henley,  "to  whatever 
Gods  may  be."  It  was  a  phrase  that  apparently 
indicated  a  fine  contempt  for  results,  a  noble  in- 
difference for  fate  and  its  decrees,  and  a  philo- 
sophic recognition  of  the  essential  futility  of  the 
whole  business. 

At  the  same  time  we  were  all  interested  be- 
yond what  our  fixed  and  conventional  phrase  im- 
plied, no  matter  what  our  affected  indifference. 
The  best  student  wanted  to  know  how  far  he  had 
left  the  "grade"  behind;  the  student  who  hoped 
that  luck  and  the  examiner's  satisfaction  in  his 
last  meal  would  play  into  his  hands,  had  but  one 
grade  in  mind  and  that  a  humble  one,  but  he  had 
it  very  much  in  mind  night  and  day.  And  ap- 
parently there  must  be  many  such;  are  not  the 
long  lists  of  equals  which  regularly  terminate  our 
class-lists  eloquent  testimony  to  this  truth?  Most 
often  "making  the  grade"  looks  to  the  minimum 
of  achievement,  not  to  the  maximum. 

And  so  one  might  go  on  indefinitely  philo- 
sophizing about  examinations,  but  no  amount  of 
philosophy  would  remove  the  examinations,  even 


Making  the  Grade  83 

as  while  there  may  be  a  philosophy  which  thinks 
away  matter,  you  still  cut  yourself  with  a  knife 
or  bump  your  head  in  the  dark  hall.  It  has  not 
been  my  purpose  in  this  ramble  to  suggest  a  pleas- 
ant age  in  prospect  wherein  the  wicked  examiner 
shall  cease  from  troubling  and  the  weary  student 
be  at  rest.  True  we  have  quite  a  band  of  amiable 
women  who  gather  at  mothers'  clubs  and  such- 
like agencies  of  what  is  called  uplift,  to  pass  reso- 
lutions against  children  and  young  people  being 
compelled  to  learn  anything  whatever  or  to  prove 
by  any  method  that  they  have  learned  anything, 
but  society  seldom  worries  much  over  these  pro- 
nouncements and  usually  smiles  the  smile  of  long 
experience  at  these  pacifists  of  education  and 
passes  by  on  the  other  side.  Rather  I  have  it  in 
mind  to  urge  that  examinations  with  all  their  ap- 
parent one-sidedness  and  unfairness  and  their  ele- 
ments of  luck  and  knack  and  all  the  rest,  are  not 
so  very  remote  from  the  general  experience  of 
life,  that  all  life  is  really  an  examination  in  which, 
whether  we  stop  to  realize  it  or  not,  we  are  can- 
didates in  the  presence  of  the  Great  Examiner. 
Now  this  may  not  reconcile  you  to  life,  this  hav- 
ing it  compared  with  an  examination,  but  perhaps 


84  College  and  Religion 

it  will  reconcile  you  to  examinations  to  learn  that 
they  are  really  a  microcosm  of  life,  and  being 
reconciled  to  examinations  is  very  important  at 
least  several  times  a  year. 

Any  examination  that  amounts  to  anything  is 
of  course  a  genuine  test  of  powers,  power  of 
memory,  power  of  reasoning,  power  of  expres- 
sion. It  is  in  part  a  review  of  work  traversed 
but  it  is  also  an  inquiry  into  your  ability  to  con- 
vert that  old  work  to  new  uses.  You  memorize 
the  formulae  of  mathematics  and  the  proofs  for 
these,  but  can  you  use  them  for  the  solution  of 
novel  propositions?  You  can  translate  all  the 
assigned  Latin  of  your  course,  but  can  you  take  a 
piece  of  unseen  Latin  and  make  an  understand- 
able rendering  of  that?  You  have  performed 
certain  analyses  in  your  chemistry  course;  how 
are  you  going  to  fare  with  the  analysis  of  the  un- 
known compound  that  you  meet  at  examination 
time?  You  will  hear  a  great  deal  of  grumbling 
against  examinations  because  they  insist  on  going 
appreciably  farther  than  the  mere  memory  and 
trying  out  the  reason  as  well;  this  is  very  child- 
ish if  you  really  believe  that  a  university  has 
some  duties  in  the  field  of  education.     Well,  life 


Making  the  Grade  85 

goes  pretty  much  as  examinations  go.  There  is 
always  plenty  of  review  on  the  back-work,  so 
much  of  it  that  the  most  patient  of  us  at  times 
get  tired  and  sigh  for  relief  from  monotonous 
and  humdrum  duties,  and  perhaps  it  is  because  we 
get  rebellious  that  we  do  not  always  make  the 
showing  we  should  on  this  part  of  life's  paper. 
We  are  inclined  to  say:  "Oh,  I've  done  that 
thing  ten  thousand  times  and  done  it  carefully  and 
well;  what's  the  use  of  bringing  this  up  again?" 
just  like  the  examinee  who  says:  "Aw  shucks. 
Professor  X.  has  heard  me  translate  that  passage 
half-a-dozen  times;  why  does  he  come  asking  for 
it  here  again  on  his  paper?"  and  forthwith  pro- 
ceeds to  do  a  sloppy  piece  of  work.  Perhaps  life 
and  examinations  are  both  wrong;  at  all  events 
they  are  curiously  alike. 

But  life  brings  every  now  and  then,  sometimes 
in  very  rapid  procession,  a  series  of  original  prob- 
lems for  solution,  and  then  the  examination  be- 
comes critical.  Everything  that  you  have  ever"^^ 
come  to  know  through  previous  experience,  every 
atom  of  accumulated  judgment,  is  required  to 
face  the  new  situation  and  to  reason  out  the  new 
conclusion.     Well,  did  you  ever  meet  the  type 


86  College  and  Religion 

of  examinee  who,  after  first  objecting  to  one  ex- 
amination on  the  ground  that  it  needlessly  cov- 
ered the  old  trails  again,  next  assails  a  second 
examination  because  it  made  too  much  demand 
on  the  reason?  You  will  find  plenty  of  people 
acting  that  way  in  life's  examination  too.  While 
things  are  going  as  they  have  always  gone,  they 
will  be  found  complaining  of  the  monotony  of 
their  existence;  when  life's  storms  descend  upon 
them  in  the  form  of  loss,  sorrow,  frustration  of 
plans,  sickness,  situations  which  call  for  reason 
applied  to  experience  for  a  solution,  you  will  find 
them  reproaching  God  for  having  deserted  them 
or  laid  upon  them  a  burden  greater  than  they 
can  bear.  But  that  is  rather  feeble.  We  are 
apt  to  think  poorly  of  the  student  who  cries :  "I 
don't  want  to  have  to  face  any  new  situation  on 
my  examination  because  that  is  something  I  can't 
prepare  for;"  in  like  manner  we  have  a  right  to 
sense  a  lack  of  moral  fibre  in  one  who  in  life 
prays  for  tasks  equal  to  his  strength  rather  than 
seeks  strength  to  measure  up  to  his  tasks.  He 
will  not  make  much  of  a  showing  in  life's  ex- 
amination; he  may  "make  the  grade"  in  the  poor- 
est sense  of  the  term,  but  you  will  not  need  to 


Making  the  Grade  87 

bother  looking  for  his  name  in  the  first  division. 
He  is  not  the  material  from  which  is  made  a 
Moses  or  Elijah  or  Socrates  or  Jesus  or  John  Hus 
or  Savonarola  or  Galileo  or  Cromwell  or  Lin- 
coln or  Cardinal  Mercier  or  the  other  names  be- 
fore which  we  bare  our  heads.  They  were  con- 
cerned with  something  better  than  making  the 
grade,  and  so  have  won  immortality. 

Examinations  are  not  ideal  arrangements;  no 
more  is  life.  Examinations,  sometimes  by  malice, 
more  often  by  inadvertence,  are  unjust;  life  is 
likewise  full  of  little  injustices  which  are  usually 
the  result  of  carelessness,  forgetfulness,  or  sel- 
fishness, and  of  greater  injustices  which  can  be 
set  down  mostly  to  sheer  malevolence,  and  you 
have  to  take  these  injustices  little  or  great  along 
with  the  rest  of  the  paper.  A  good  deal  of  your 
education  comes  in  the  handling  of  these,  and  the 
test  of  your  education  will  lie  in  the  manner  of 
man  or  woman  you  emerge  from  this  part  of  the 
test.  And  remember  that  the  real  examiner  who 
knows  his  business,  never  reads  very  far  in  the 
answer-paper  before  he  discovers  the  error  of 
inadvertence  in  the  paper  that  he  has  set  and 
makes  due  allowance  for  it;  so  too  I  doubt  not 


88  College  and  Religion 

that  God,  the  Great  Examiner,  as  he  looks  over 
the  answer-papers  of  life  realizes  how  unfair  his 
paper  has  been  at  times  and  in  places  to  poor, 
stumbling  individuals,  and  just  cancels  the  score 
in  the  Book  of  Life. 

The  grades  are  hard  to  decipher  in  the  returns 
from  life's  examinations  except  for  the  few  con- 
spicuous firsts  we  have  all  agreed  to  recognize. 
We  are  not  very  certain  about  our  own  perform- 
ances, and  the  best  people  in  the  world,  like  the 
pleasantly  diffident  students  I  mentioned,  will 
hardly  do  more  than  express  the  hope  that  they 
have  made  the  grade.  We  are  in  the  situation 
of  a  large  class  after  the  papers  are  handed  in; 
certain  ones,  we  know,  have  passed  and  passed 
well,  but  the  fate  of  the  general  run  of  the  class 
is  in  the  hands  of  the  examiner.  So  we  stand  in 
life.  Some  certainly  have  ''made  the  grade"  by 
devoted  lives  and  heroic  deaths;  the  common  run 
of  us  write  on  and  the  Great  Examiner  in  no 
way  signifies  what  the  result  is.  For  ourselves, 
we  shall  probably  learn  only  otherwhere  how 
well  or  ill  we  wrought;  others  who  remain  after 
we  have  passed  on,  may  be  able  to  say  of  us  that 
we  got  through.     If  dying  we  still  live  in  a  tender 


Making  the  Grade  89 

heart  or  two  that  was  the  better  for  our  living, 
I  doubt  not  that,  whether  with  distinction  or  no, 
we  shall  have  made  the  grade. 

St.  Paul  saw  well  enough  that  there  are  no 
one  hundred  per  cent  papers  in  life's  examinations, 
and  so  he  wrote:  *'We  have  all  sinned  and  come 
short  of  the  glory  of  God."  Most  of  us  are 
humble  enough  to  admit  at  each  day's  end  that 
the  result  St.  Paul  indicates  is  correct;  what 
bothers  us  at  the  day's  end  is  the  sense  of  failure 
that  it  often  brings,  the  sense  that  we  cannot 
truthfully  cry  "Vixi !  I  have  lived!"  The  glory 
of  God  is  our  ideal,  the  finest  moral  and  spiritual 
ideal  we  can  form  for  ourselves,  not  some  phys- 
ical nimbus  or  halo,  as  some  people  seem  to  think, 
who  have  never  got  any  further  through  the 
wilderness  than  Mt.  Sinai;  it  is  the  sun  of  our 
hopes,  the  star  by  which  we  steer  our  way,  a  sun 
that  glows  and  a  star  that  brightly  beams, 
illumining  all  of  life  if  we  will  but  suffer  it. 
The  ordinary  ideals  of  our  life  we  sometimes 
overtake;  this  is  in  us  the  infinite  ideal,  and  of  it 
we  necessarily  fall  short.  But  there  is  no  need 
for  gloom  over  that,  no  need  to  found  upon  St. 
Paul's  word  some  appalling  theory  of  everlasting 


90  College  and  Religion 

damnation  by  an  offended  God;  the  real  gloom 
is  for  those  who  reck  nothing  of  the  glory  of  God 
or  of  the  fact  that  they  fall  short  of  it.  They 
simply  isolate  themselves  from  moral  develop- 
ment and  lose  much  of  the  zest  of  the  life  that 
now  is,  and,  I  should  conjecture,  imperil  their 
chances  of  progress  in  any  life  to  come  that  there 
may  be. 

I  have  spoken  once  or  twice  of  the  Great 
Examiner  under  whom  we  are  all  candidates  and 
whose  papers  we  take,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously. It  is  not  possible  to  say  much  of  Him 
because  His  revelation  of  Himself  Is  such  an  in- 
dividual experience  that  it  almost  eludes  telling 
and  in  the  telling  seems  to  lose  its  certainty  and  its 
charm.  But  those  who  have  known  Him  best,  do 
not  report  Him  as  the  stern  and  savage  Examiner 
of  whom  we  have  so  often  heard,  always  more 
ready  to  pluck  a  candidate  than  to  pass  him. 
Indeed  if  He  were  such.  He  would  be  no  fit 
Examiner  in  the  scheme  of  the  Universe,  and 
God  and  the  Universe  are  one.  You  as  students 
would  have  a  very  poor  opinion  of  a  notorious 
"plucking"  examiner  who  stopped  more  people 
than  he  passed  because  it  suggests  to  your  mind 


Making  the  Grade  91 

injustice,  and  we  may  not  form  a  conception  of 
the  Great  Examiner  which  is  unjust,  which  re- 
flects upon  His  justice.  The  conceptions  of  God 
in  the  past  were  not  flattering  in  this  regard;  now 
through  the  influence  of  liberal  thought  we  feel 
that  God  as  our  Examiner  wants  to  find  out,  not 
how  bad  we  are,  but  how  much  progress  we  have 
made  in  appreciating  the  good,  the  beautiful  and 
the  true.  It  is  true  that  He  does  not  set  easy 
papers,  but  He  sets  no  papers  that  cannot  be 
done,  although  some  can  be  solved  and  answered 
only  with  blood  and  tears.  And  they  must  be 
taken;  we  cannot  decline  God's  papers,  because 
we  are  in  fact  at  work  upon  them  every  minute 
of  our  lives. 

And  that  is  the  way  in  which  the  Great  Ex- 
aminer's papers  avoid  the  charge  so  often  laid 
against  examinations,  that  they  have  the  result 
of  encouraging  a  cram  towards  the  last.  I  am 
afraid  that  there  is  no  cram  towards  the  last  that 
will  avail  us  much  in  God's  papers;  I  have  no  con- 
fidence in  mystic  formulae  which  will  at  the 
eleventh  hour  save  the  situation  and  suddenly 
prepare  an  obviously  unprepared  candidate. 
That    might    possibly    work    at    times    in    the 


92  College  and  Religion 

academic  life;  It  will  not  work  here.  The  ex- 
amination is  continuous;  it  Is  the  building  of 
character,  and  character-building  is  a  process  that 
is  life-long,  and  it  may  be  longer  than  even  that. 
It  is  folly  then  to  postpone  any  distinct  effort  on 
this  examination;  ''now  is  the  accepted  time  and 
now  Is  the  day  of  salvation."  Begin  to  think, 
not  prigglshly  but  seriously,  of  thoughts,  words, 
and  deeds,  as  part  of  your  examination  mate- 
rial, and  study  day  by  day  to  frame  your  answers 
a  little  less  short  of  your  own  best  Ideal,  which 
stands  to  you  for  the  time  being  as  the  "glory  of 
God."  Then  again — and  this  Is  good  advice 
both  for  man's  examinations  and  for  God's — do 
not  fasten  your  gaze  too  much  on  the  examina- 
tion material  but  keep  an  eye  on  the  goal.  It  is 
bigger  than  the  processes  that  bring  you  there, 
just  as  an  education  is  bigger  than  Math.  6  or 
Latin  51.  And  only  by  cherishing  the  golden 
vision  of  the  goal  both  In  education  and  In  life 
shall  we  escape  the  soul-weariness  that  examina- 
tions always  bring;  it  is  the  will  to  win  the  goal 
that  emancipates  us  from  examination  drudgery 
and  makes  us  the  free  sons  of  God. 


COMMENCEMENT 

This  is  the  ceremony  which  the  English  call 
''convocation."  For  myself  I  prefer  the  New 
England  term  "commencement."  Convocation 
suggests  to  my  mind  all  the  dignitaries  on  the 
platform,  governor,  justices,  chancellor,  presi- 
dent, deans,  professors,  in  a  quite  dazzling  and 
unintelligible  array  of  hoods  and  gowns  and  caps. 
But  to  the  reflective  mind  these  are  not  the  figures 
of  interest  on  the  day  of  graduation;  the  vital 
feature  is  the  galaxy  of  young  seniors  in  the  audi- 
torium below,  whose  gowns  are  simple  black  and 
whose  hoods  do  not  so  much  suggest  a  spectro- 
scopic analysis.  It  is  of  them  we  should  be  think- 
ing; it  is  their  day  of  days  when  the  period  of 
academic  preparation  is  completed  and  they  are 
ready  at  last  to  "commence,"  to  enter  upon  the 
larger  field.  By  all  means  let  it  be  "commence- 
ment," which  turns  the  spot-light  on  the  proper 
place ! 

It  is  a  pretty  thought  contained  in  that  word, 

93 


94  College  and  Religion 

rather  a  heartening  thought  too  for  a  good  many 
of  you,  I  imagine.  College  days  have  been  so 
joyful  and  on  the  whole  so  carefree  despite  pro- 
fessors, classes  and  examinations,  that  to  some 
this  day  we  call  ^'commencement"  takes  on  rather 
the  aspect  of  the  everlasting  end  of  all  things;  it 
seems  impossible  to  visualize  life  without  the 
accompaniments  I  have  just  mentioned,  and  from 
what  we  cannot  visualize,  we  usually  shrink. 
And  so  these  to  whom  I  have  just  referred 

feel  like  one  who  treads  alone 
Some  banquet  hall  deserted. 
Whose  guests  are  fled,  whose  garlands  dead. 
And  all  but  he  departed. 

But  courage!  Life  does  not  consist  merely  in 
the  repetition  of  one  type  of  experience;  its  mar- 
vel and  wonder  is  made  up  in  the  succession 
of  different  experiences.  You  remember  how 
Shakespeare  has  put  that  view  in  his  seven  ages 
of  man;  what  he  states  cynically,  I  believe  in 
practically  as  the  thing  that  gives  savor  to  living. 
It  has  been  good  to  be  a  student,  it  has  been  a 
time  of  rare  joys,  wonderful  friendships,  ripen- 
ing knowledge,  frolicsome  diversion;  all  true,  but 
would  you  deliberately  choose  to  remain  forever 


Commencement  95 

an  undergraduate?  No,  you  would  not  even  if 
you  could,  because  an  instinct  tells  you  it  is  not 
the  law  of  the  best  life  to  live  in  a  state  of 
arrested  experience,  no  matter  how  high  or  holy 
that  experience  may  be.  "Lord,  it  is  good  for  us 
to  be  here,"  said  Peter  on  the  Mount  of  Transfig- 
uration, "let  us  therefore  make  all  preparations  to 
stay  here,"  but  God  knew^  better  and  drew  the 
vision  to  a  close  so  that  with  Jesus  the  disciples 
might  return  to  the  plain  to  pick  up  the  thread  of 
life  once  more  in  the  field  of  action.  And  so  I 
have  said  that  if  any  of  you  are  feeling  just  a  little 
gloomy  about  this  day  which  marks  the  end  of 
your  undergraduate  course,  you  should  find  cheer 
and  encouragement  in  this  good  word  "Com- 
mencement" which  will  serve  to  remind  you  that, 
while  no  doubt  much  is  left  behind,  it  is  left  be- 
hind only  that  you  may  step  through  the  open- 
swinging  portals  into  a  larger  life. 

Let  us  think  for  a  moment  of  what  you  are 
leaving;  I  dp  not  refer  now  to  the  frolics  and 
the  fun  and  the  friendships,  but  to  the  proper 
work  of  a  university.  You  are  leaving  the  place 
where  for  the  first  time  In  most  cases  you  came 
to  know  Intellectual  responsibility.     You  came  to 


g6  College  and  Religion 

the  university  from  the  routine  discipline  of  the 
school-room;  that  has  been  gradually  relaxed 
through  your  several  years  until  at  the  last  lec- 
tures had  quite  succeeded  recitations,  and  in  the 
happier  instances,  frank  conversation  between 
student  and  teacher  had  succeeded  lectures.  In 
this  way  you  were  learning  to  stand  intellectually 
on  your  own  feet,  and  so  gradual  on  the  whole 
has  the  process  been  that  your  instructors  have 
realized  the  change  better  than  yourselves. 
Well,  you  must  leave  that  process  behind  now  so 
far  as  further  formal  development  of  it  at  the 
hands  of  your  college  instructors  goes;  the  ques- 
tion for  you  is,  are  you  going  to  leave  it  behind 
actually  as  well  as  formally,  or  are  you  going 
to  carry  out  into  the  new  life,  the  commencement 
of  which  lies  so  near,  this  principle  of  intellectual 
responsibility  for  yourself?  In  the  church,  in  the 
political  party,  in  the  community,  are  you  going 
to  lean  or  are  you  going  to  do  your  own  thinking? 
The  great  test  of  your  education  is  the  capacity 
it  has  developed  in  you  to  think  straight  and  to 
think  through;  are  you  going  from  your  very 
commencement  to  demonstrate  that  in  some  sense 
you    really    have    gained    an    education?     Your 


Commencement 


97 


answer  is  a  very  vital  concern  to  the  social  group 
of  which  you  are  to  constitute  a  unit. 

I  have  used  the  phrase  "to  think  straight"; 
that  implies  that  you  do  not  allow  yourself  to  be 
drawn  in  this  direction  or  in  that  overmuch  by 
bias,  prejudice,  or  distorted  vision,  but  that  with 
your  eye  fixed  on  the  Pole  Star,  you  steer  for  the 
goal  of  decision.  "Shun  thou  extremes,"  save  in 
those  crises  which  will  arise  from  time  to  time 
when,  as  Sumner,  the  great  Massachusetts  Sena- 
tor, said  upon  the  issue  of  slavery:  "There  is  no 
other  side";  ordinarily  have  much  regard  for  the 
arguments  from  this  side  and  from  that,  and 
decide  in  calmness  the  issue.  I  am  not  pretend- 
ing that  this  is  any  simple  or  easy  thing,  or  a 
thing  in  which  men  and  women  ordinarily  succeed 
very  well,  but  it  is  for  you  above  all  people  to 
try  in  virtue  of  your  education. 

You  are  leaving  behind  you  your  instruction  in 
intellectual  method,  thinking  straight,  and  your 
instruction  in  intellectual  aim,  thinking  through; 
you  are  also  leaving  behind  an  atmosphere  con- 
sciously permeated  with  the  love  of  the  true  and 
the  beautiful  for  their  own  sakes,  a  little  kingdom 
in  which  the  rarest  treasures  are  often  "all  the 


98  College  and  Religion 

charm  of  all  the  Muses  flowering  in  a  lonely 
word,"  or,  it  may  be,  the  discovery  of  a  new  star- 
world  swimming  into  our  astonied  ken.  It  is  the 
realm  of  the  Mind,  a  realm  where  all  who  com- 
prehend are  kings  and  there  are  no  slaves.  I 
hope  you  have  learned  to  think  well  of  that  en- 
chanted garden  which  you  can  carry  with  you 
anywhere  if  you  really  love  its  brooks  and  flow- 
ers, so  that  the  darkest  place  can  be  made  light 
and  the  hardest  road  easy  and  the  roughest  places 
plain  and  the  saddest  days  more  cheerful  and  pain 
relieved  and  death  assuaged  in  the  contemplation 
of  that  garden  and  in  sweet  recollections  that 
gather  around  it.  Do  not  forget  it  as  you  go 
out  into  a  world  where  thought  for  its  own  sake 
and  beauty  for  its  own  sake  is  rather  at  a  dis- 
count, the  world  whereof  the  poet  felt  wearily 
obliged  to  write 

The  world  is  too  much  with  us;  late  and  soon, 
Getting  and  spending  we  lay  waste  our  powers ; 
Little  we  see  in  Nature  that  is  ours; 
We  have  given  our  hearts  away,  a  sordid  boon! 

That  single  inspiration  which  above  all  others 
a  university  training  should  provide  is  such  that 
he  who  has  received  it  can  afford  to  laugh  at  the 


Commencement  99 

person  who  tells  him  that  the  real  prizes  of  life 
lie  elsewhere  than  in  the  life  of  the  mind. 

But  do  not  understand  me  as  warning  you  at 
the  very  time  of  the  commencement  of  your  life 
in  the  world,  against  that  world.  It  is  not  an 
ideal  world,  but  good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  it  is 
our  world,  and  we  must  treat  it  as  such.  There 
is  much  justice  in  Thomas  Carlyle's  grim  re- 
joinder when  some  one  reported  to  him  that 
Margaret  Fuller,  the  great  transcendentalist,  had 
said:  "I  accept  the  Universe."  "Egad!"  said 
the  Chelsea  sage,  "she'd  better;  she's  in  it!"  I 
do  not  warn  you  after  the  manner  of  some  against 
loving  the  world  and  the  things  that  are  in  the 
world.  It  is  in  many  ways  a  great  world,  surely, 
full  of  wonderful  experiences,  opening  many  ave- 
nues of  interest  and  usefulness  before  us,  offering 
posts  that  it  is  honorable  to  fill,  containing  untold 
store  of  objects  of  art  and  beauty;  it  would  be 
folly  to  advise  you  against  that  world.  All  I 
asked  was  that  in  that  world  you  should  seek  to 
maintain  some  sort  of  mental  perspective,  a 
wholesome  respect  for  thought,  for  straight 
thought  and  for  thought  leading  somewhere. 
Sometimes,  it  is  true,  such  an  attitude  will  find 


100  College  and  Religion 

you  cutting  prejudice  against  the  grain,  but  if 
you  have  the  grace  of  speaking  the  truth  in  love, 
which  seems  to  me  as  a  virtue  to  overtop  faith, 
hope,  and  charity,  you  will  be  able  in  the  end  to 
make  the  old  world  hear  you. 

Let  us  now  for  a  little  turn  from  the  old  life 
to  scan  the  design  of  the  new  more  closely.  On 
your  commencement  day  you  stand  fortunately 
on  one  of  life's  ridges  from  which  you  look  back- 
wards to  be  sure,  but  forwards  as  well;  you  con- 
template the  plain  and  the  foothills  along  which 
you  have  come  to  your  present  eminence,  and  you 
see  that  to  gain  the  next  ridge,  you  will  have 
to  go  down  through  a  valley,  the  Valley  of  Ad- 
justment, I  should  call  it,  your  freshman  year  in 
the  post-graduate  university  of  life.  What  shall 
be  your  aims  and  hopes  as  you  prepare  to  leave 
the  elevation  which  for  a  short  space  you  gain 
on  Commencement  Day? 

There  are  three  attitudes  in  any  one  of  which 
you  may  leave  college,  the  attitude  of  the  indif- 
ferentist,  the  frankly  selfish  attitude,  and  the  atti- 
tude of  helpfulness  and  service.  Of  the  two 
former  I  dread  most  indifferentism  for  any  one 
of  you.     I  can  conceive  of  a  selfishness  directed 


Commencement '    ' '  *    '.'-'■  'joi-' 

towards  noble  ends,  and  solely  or  chiefly  vitiated 
by  a  desire  to  figure  in  the  world's  approving 
gaze;  Laodiceanism  is  more  serious.  I  do  not 
mean  that  there  are  not  just  compromises  which 
can  and  indeed  constantly  must  be  made  in  life, 
but  what  I  want  to  urge  upon  you  is  this,  the 
pleasure  and  the  privilege  of  having  a  few  definite 
convictions.  One  gets  out  of  patience  with  the 
"perhaps's"  and  the  "may  he's"  and  the  "I  didn't 
mean's"  and  the  "can't  really  say's"  of  so  much 
of  our  modern  conversation,  which  leave  one 
wondering  whether  he  is  dealing  with  vertebrates 
or  jelly-fish.  Hold  at  least  some  few  definite 
opinions,  not  dogmatically  but  upon  thoughtful 
and  reasoned  bases,  and  be  prepared  to  maintain 
your  ground  courteously  but  firmly  in  the  face  of 
opposition.  This  does  not  preclude  you  from  the 
possibility  of  changing  your  opinions  in  the  light 
of  better  evidence  and  more  mature  considera- 
tion; indeed,  if  in  the  next  five  or  ten  years  you 
have  not  materially  altered  most  of  your  present 
ideas,  I  should  suspect  that  mental  ossification 
had  set  in. 

But    if    you    escape    indifferentism    and   avoid 
selfishness,   there   still   remains   the   question   of 


102  College  and  Religion 

what  is  the  helpful  and  the  serviceable  in  life. 
I  wish  here  to  record  my  dissent  from  much  ad- 
vice and  exhortation  that  is  put  forward  under 
this  head;  I  mean  that  wild  urge  toward  social 
service  and  the  like  which  is  so  zealously  applied 
by  good-intentioned  people  to  college  graduates 
of  recent  standing.  The  young  college  graduate 
is  a  natural  mark  for  every  enthusiast  connected 
with  such  enterprises;  he  is  regarded  as  a  useful 
ally  because  of  his  education,  and  as  a  person 
who  having  neatly  canned  the  products  of  four 
years'  thinking,  will  never  have  to  lay  in  any 
further  store,  but  is  available  for  committee 
meetings  and  executive  meetings  and  conferences 
night  and  day.  Consider  carefully  before  you 
thus  commit  yourself.  Your  education  is  but 
just  begun ;  it  is,  like  everything  else  at  this  time, 
but  at  its  commencement,  and  you  need  most  of 
the  time  and  leisure  which  will  be  yours  for  the 
next  two  or  three  years  for  consolidating  by  read- 
ing more  extensively  those  positions  already 
roughly  established  in  college  work.  The  great 
trouble  with  so  many  people  is  that  in  reading 
the  second  of  the  terms  of  eternal  life  which 
Jesus  laid  down,  they  do  not  preserve  an  even 


Commencement  103 

stress  throughout,  and  yet  the  injunction  reads: 
"Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself  J'  And 
I  strongly  believe  that  in  many  cases  there  will 
not  be  much  profit  derived  by  neighbor  from 
being  "loved"  by  some  social  worker  who  has 
not  taken  the  time  to  improve  himself.  There 
is  no  sense  in  going  out  to  lift  humanity  up  unless 
you  are  really  sure  that  you  are  on  a  higher  level 
than  they. 

This  much  by  way  of  warning:  it  would  be 
equally  regrettable  that  you  should  merely  wrap 
your  talent  in  a  napkin  and  bury  it  so  that  you 
might  present  it  at  least  undiminished  to  your 
Lord.  The  first  duty  awaiting  you  is  this,  that 
you  should  perform  with  the  utmost  efficiency 
and  devotion  the  work  which  is  given  you  to  do. 
You  remember  how  the  apostle  puts  it,  "he  that 
teacheth,  on  teaching,  he  that  exhorteth,  on  ex- 
hortation, he  that  ruleth,  with  diligence."  That 
is  the  first  thing;  that  duty  rendered,  engage  in 
some  form  of  social  activity,  but  without  violence 
to  the  need  of  your  own  soul  for  study,  refresh- 
ment, and  repose.  If  there  be  those  who  feel 
no  need  of  these,  well  and  good, — for  them,  that 
is,  though  I  doubt  if  it  is  well  and  good  for  the 


104  College  and  Religion 

rest  of  us, — but  the  educated  man  must  have  them ; 
it  is  doubtful  if  he  is  an  educated  man  if  he  does 
not  want  them,  and  it  is  certain  that  he  will  hardly 
remain  an  educated  man  if  he  does  not  get  them. 

You  will  see  that  I  am  not  proclaiming  to  you 
that  it  is  your  duty  to  sally  forth  into  a  cruel 
world  to  slay  dragons,  to  liberate  oppressed 
princes,  or  to  redeem  princesses  laboring  under 
some  magic  spell;  all  that  is  very  romantic  and 
appealing,  and  there  will  be  many  commence- 
ment speakers  to  dwell  upon  the  glorious  careers 
opening  before  you.  I  am  seeking  rather  to  hold 
up  for  you  an  ordinary,  common-sense  ideal 
which  may  serve  to  sustain  you  as  you  gradually 
discover  that  it  is  but  seldom  that  our  feet  cross 
the  trail  of  true  romance  and  that  for  most  of 
us  life  is  the  daily  round  and  the  common  task. 
Still,  it  is  the  faithful  performance  of  that  round 
that  makes  civilization  possible,  and  as  for  us 
individually  it  may  be  that  in  the  grind  we  be- 
come more  perfectly  polished  gems. 

I  have  said  a  good  deal  about  loving  yourself 
and  a  little  about  loving  your  neighbor,  but  there 
is  yet  one  thing  needful;  there  is  the  first  com- 
mandment of  the  simple  duologue  of  the  Man  of 


Commencement  105 

Nazareth,  in  which  is  enjoined  upon  us  the  love 
of  God.  To  explain  to  you  what  the  term  signi- 
fies to  me  would  be  an  address  in  itself  and  is 
moreover  unnecessary  to  our  purpose;  whatever 
our  several  interpretations,  in  the  end  it  comes 
to  this,  that  if  we  feel  we  can  conscientiously  use 
the  phrase  "love  of  God,"  we  are  recognizing 
some  sanction  upon  life  other  than  such  as  are 
merely  obvious,  that  our  souls  reach  out  beyond 
the  bourne  of  time  and  space  and  seek  Him  who 
is  Eternal,  abiding  in  the  heavens,  that  we  believe 
in  the  great  purposes  of  this  Eternal  whom  we 
call  God,  and  are  convinced  that  He  stands  in 
such  a  relation  to  us  that  it  is  indeed  true  that 
believing  in  Him,  we  shall  never  perish.  It  is  the 
third  of  three  animating  ideas  which  most  of  us 
feel  we  need;  we  must  first  get  into  harmony 
with  our  own  self,  next,  relate  that  self  to  society, 
and,  finally,  achieve  a  philosophy  of  our  position 
in  regard  to  the  Infinite,  the  Not-Ourselves.  _  I 
should  think,  at  all  events  I  should  hope,  that 
your  years  in  college  have  not  made  this  last  task 
any  less  possible  for  you,  but  rather  far  more 
feasible  and  attractive.  It  will  be  strange  indeed 
if  difficulties  have  not  arisen  by  the  way,  it  will 


io6  College  and  Religion 

be  strange  if  your  thought  of  God  is  quite  what 
it  was  four  years  ago,  but  God  will  be  God  just 
the  same;  the  point  simply  is  that  He  has  given 
you  a  new  revelation  of  Himself  in  a  dozen  fields 
of  thought,  and  your  conception  has  altered  and 
expanded.  As  I  have  said,  I  cannot  presume  to 
dictate  any  ready-made  theology  on  which  we 
could  all  agree,  but  I  should  like  to  feel  that  we 
are  in  tolerable  harmony  on  this  at  least,  that 
back  of  Diversity  lies  Unity,  back  of  Discord, 
Harmony,  back  of  the  Transient  the  Eternal, 
back  of  Man  and  Nature,  God,  and  that  we  are 
dignified  in  our  mortal  existence  with  the  great 
privilege  of  being  His  collaborators,  fellow-work- 
ers together  with  Him  in  the  achievements  of  pur- 
poses which  are  ultimate,  even  if  we  cannot 
always  see  the  goal.  There  is  a  great  dignity 
lent  to  human  life  by  such  a  belief,  and  ennobling 
is  just  what  you  will  often  feel  your  life  requires 
as  the  bloom  of  youth  begins  to  fade.  Youth 
in  itself  ennobles  life  at  one  stage  with  the  sheer 
joy  of  living;  later,  when  the  pulse  beats  not  so 
fast,  you  will  find  the  need  of  some  high  calling 
of  God  to  make  life  seem  worth  while.  I  trust 
that  at  such  a  time  some  word,  thought,  inspira- 


Commencement  107 

tion  of  your  college  days  may  be  the  golden  key 
for  the  solution  of  your  problem;  a  university 
that  has  done  something  for  the  spirit  as  well  as 
for  the  mind  is  gratefully  remembered  as  an 
Alma  Mater. 

Some  of  you,  as  I  hinted,  are  thinking  of  things 
as  finishing  because  your  course  here  is  at  an  end, 
but  really  you  are  just  toeing  the  mark  for  the 
race  of  life.  It  is  actually  a  relay  race  in  which 
you  are  the  next  team,  the  team  to  whom  your 
immediate  predecessors  hand  on  the  torch. 
Yours  is  the  task  to  hold  it  high,  to  keep  it  burn- 
ing brightly,  and  to  deliver  it  without  fail  to  those 
who  shall  in  turn  follow  you. 


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APB   17    1933 

APH    18  1933 
APfi   19   1933 

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